Disgaean Reincarnation
by OverlordEnki
Summary: When it comes to places you wanna wake up in, anywhere in the Nippon Ichi universe is not likely going to be one of your first choices. [Self insert, OC]
1. Chapter 1

When I first awoke, I noticed a familiar oddness. Many people describe out of body experiences, like floating or hovering. Personally mine had always had the great misfortune to include a spinning sensation, except it never felt like I was spinning, more like the room was spinning, and I would slowly rise towards the twirling ceiling and it would get continually darker as I approached all while while the room would go faster and faster.

Normally just before it went all dark I'd wake up in a fright and it would take a bit before I could settle back down to sleep.

Only this time it just kept going, except now I couldn't see shit, and my body didn't feel like it was there. Truth be told I was scared silly. This however passed after who knows how long. Spinning darkness makes a very poor reference for time. As I started to think.

The last thing I remembered was walking down a flight of stairs, and my foot misstep, and it blurred together but then I saw last step just in my vision. A brief flash of pain...Fuck I died didn't I.

God fucking damn it! Did I really fucking get taken out by a flight of stairs? I strained my memory against itself. A flash memory, warm liquid pooling around my face, A flash of the medics talking. "DoA...clean up...can." '_oi stop fucking around and fix me!'_ I had thought at the voices.

Apparently my brain has still been firing off those last few moments before the synapses finally gave out. Even having a hospital next door wouldn't have saved me I don't think. Still I have no memory of them trying to resurrect my ass so i'm going to blame them. I died, I feel like that entitles me to be unreasonable.

I suppose I spend a long time feeling depressed and sorry for myself, and the people I left behind. I would qualify as socialite, but leaving them all behind still sucked. Eventually It occurred to me that, given that I've died, and still have conscious thoughts, there is now an excellent chance some sort of afterlife exist. Therefore ill be able to see them all again. So while yea it sucks they are going to be sad, there is a very good chance ill be able to see them again sooner or later which really takes away from the guilt of leaving them behind.

Hey that means I get to meet all the people who passed on before me... By all that is good and holy I hoped that there is some kind of censorship thing in the afterlife that keeps us from watching others during more..embarrassing moments..or I am going to be catching a shitload of flak.

Then again ill be made fun of regardless, given I stumbled myself to death.

I gave a mental sigh. Well I can't do anything about it so I might as well not worry about it. The entire time this was all happening I was still tumbling though the void. If I could feel my stomach I'd likely of been motion sick by this point however not much I could do about it.

After a while I started to get annoyed, then angry, then furious, then I settled into a very very board.

Emotions take a lot out of you and I've had a very emotional Day/minute/month. Very little time references where available at the moment.

**THUD**

'Ow?'

'OW!'

I hit something, to my tremendous glee. Wait I that didn't feel how it was supposed too. As I searched my surroundings I noticed something. I really didn't have a body anymore. Well thats fan-fucking-tastic. _'Congrats slacker, your afterlife is to be spent as a rock.'_

I was just guessing at this point, but I was fairly certain I just meteor'd into the ground and was unharmed by it, and given I still no organs or limbs, I had to make a educated guess and so far it looked like I had reincarnated as a sentient rock.

To be perfectly frank, living as a sentient rock doesn't really have a lot of appeal, so i better start trying to do shit and hope for the best. After about an hour of trying everything including pleading and cursing, both mentally unfortunately. Progress was made.

While trying out literally everything to actually interact with my environment out I finally found something. It took a while to pinpoint where it the source again but once I did I knew I wouldn't every have to look hard again. I found what appeared to be a shard of warm light within myself. After mentally prodding it and not only finding I could interact with it, I also noted I was not exploding, which considering I had no clue whatsoever what I was doing I thought it was fantastic progress. No clue why it felt like I was getting burned, but it was something at least. Hey worst case scenario, I have spontaneous existence failure. Given the alternate was to exist as a rock forever, not a horribly tough choice. Readying myself for one last moment of terrible terrible regret I pushed it upwards.

**PAIN**

I stopped as quickly and as hard as I could. 'yea no pushing magic-soul-star-thingy into air then.' After messing with it for who knows how long more I finally gave up and decided that maybe I should push it downwards. The moment it touched the ground the effect was immediate.

I felt waves of feelings running all over my being, Pain, Pleasure, Hot, Cold, lots of nausea, before It finally settled in. and now paying attention to my senses I realized that I now had a body. I opened my new eyes for the first time, and saw the wide open sky, lit by a large red moon...


	2. Chapter 2

I blinked as I looked up at the giant red orb as it lit up the barren area all around me.

"Yea this isn't totally creepy" I mumbled absently to myself, absent absentmindedly testing my new bodies voice.

It really was eerie. The area around me was a vast scrub land, tiny planes dotted with tiny hills for miles all lit by a oversized, creepy, blood red moon.

I pulled myself up and inspected my new body. Before I go on I'd like to mention the idea of your sense of self. People generally don't commit imperfections to memory unless they are greatly life changing, and when we imagine ourselves doing things we imagine ourselves generally physically well off in these scenarios. From what I could tell that was the baseline for my new form. I seemed to be around the same height I remember being, but I was in a lot better shape, Somewhat lithe build, but a lot thinner than I recall having been, at lest since I was a little beanpole as a child.

As far as the baseline form was, I couldn't be happier. I wasn't going to win any Mr. Universe competitions but looking and feeling like I could run a marathon and suddenly having excellent flexibility was a very pleasant surprise. However upon even casual inspect I eventually counted a few outstanding oddities that I wasn't sure how I felt about. Embedded in the newly formed flesh where variable sized spheres of what appeared to be a very hard black material.

They didn't hurt, actually touching them felt a bit like how it feels to prodding the base of your fingernails.

All in all, I think there where only the five I could see. One on the top of each foot. One resting in the base of each palm. And a very large one in the middle of my chest.

I'm not an expert on physiology, but I suspect some serious shenanigans as that one should be messing up any number of things, yet it wasn't. Well, so far. If I suddenly keeled over that would resolve that question at least.

Eventually I had to just write it off under the 'shit happens' category of things I could worry about later on. Looking at the landscape it was fairly bleak to say the least. Oddly enough It felt..familiar? Not in a '_I know where I am_' or a '_I've been her before_' sense but more a '_This belongs to me._' Imagine if you purchased a piece of land in the middle of no where and drove out to it to the first time and you'd be pretty close to the feeling I had.

Looking around for a minute I more or less had two options. One, Pick a random direction and start walking in it until I found something. Or Two; try messing with the power that just made me a body. All in all it was a pretty easy choice, seeing as how I had no idea which way to go, for all I know the plane is just an endless expanse, and lastly Im not sure if ill run into anything hostile. I for one would not like to run into Cthulhu or any of his little brothers any time soon, and given the whole, "I'm suddenly in an alternate universe afterlife thing." Yea gonna stay put for a bit. As this doesn't look like any kind of paradise to me.

I sat myself down near one of the small trees that scattered through the area and found my 'core' once again. It only now occurred to me just how easy it was to focus without a body. Before there wasn't anything to distract me, but now every little thing seemed to demand attention. Bleh no helping it though. Eventually I found the place where the light-shard-core-thingy was earlier. To my dismay the shard wasn't there anymore, but a strange blue aura was present. After being overly cautions for a while I started trying to mess with it in earnest however nothing seemed to work. _'Ugg, I wish I had someone else here to help me'_ Suddenly a large portion of it jumped out of me and into the tree. In a panic I snapped myself out of my meditation, to find a very pretty blue haired? Elf? Wearing what appeared to be a military-esk outfit consisting of Very tall combat boots that pinned a pair of baggy fatigue pants being held up by a belt. Her camo-vest covered a very small baggy tube top shirt which exposed a fantastic mid-drift and her delicate arms. She had a helmet that hung loosely covering the back of her neck, while a pair of large goggles covered the front. She looked confused for half a second before she fell over and started screaming in pain. Given that she was right behind me It didn't take much to move to her side at least.

I had no clue what to do as she writhed in agony as she started coughing blood, and she slowly started bleeding from her mouth. I tried to touch her and felt a massive pull from my core again, _'Ah,Fuck me!_' as realization dawned. I stopped resisting and started forcing as much energy into her as I could. A faint glow seemed to come from behind her body and she seemed to be mending itself. Apparently I was the reason she appeared,and apparently stopping part way was...not an option.

I was starting to become concerned as the power I had felt started to dwindle however I realized she had stopped pulling already and I was just draining myself, so I cut it off. The moment I did so she took in a deep breath opened her eyes and looked up at me 'wow, pretty blue eyes' I thought. She caught her breath and spoke "My lord than..."she turned red as she averted her eyes from my gaze.

"PERVERT!" she screamed in my face ._'wha?'_ "Wha?" **WHAM! **Remember when I said she had delicate arms? I lied , I lied through my teeth . Her delicate right arm propelled her delicate fist into the side of my face and I flew. I literally flew away from her. Do you know how much force a fist has to have to propel an adult male through the air to the point of flying? I don't either but I now could hazard a guess; a lot.

As a fuzzy warm fuzziness started trickling through my brain two thoughts managed to work themselves out. First was_'what the hell does she mean pervert? I'm not a pervert!'_ I thought unhappily before the realization hit me that I was naked and hovering over an unconscious girl. The last thought that passed through my likely bleeding skull was _'wow that was so cliché.._' then I was out like a light.

AN: Tweaked a small portion that i had meant to fix before posting.


	3. Chapter 3

Waking up can really suck sometimes. This is defiantly one of those times. I felt like someone hit me in the face with a truck. It wasn't the sharp pain of getting injured, fortunately, but the dull throb of your face telling you not to go headbutt walls, or in this case stand naked over pretty girls who can apparently bench-press a truck. Okay maybe she didn't hit me that hard, but it damn well felt like it.

I tried to get up however I suddenly felt a very boot-like pressure on my chest, and sharp against my neck. "Someone is awake I see" said a feminine voice, dripping pleasantly with acid.

I tried to forced my eyes to squint open. Well, my right one, the left one seemed to be badly swollen, and was politely refusing to get with the program. And above me a saw the girl who had recently knocked my ass out cold. Her boot was planted on my chest and she had a knife held up to my throat. _'Wait that last one is very bad, I should probably address that..'_

"Umm good morning?" I asked tentatively able to make out that it was a good deal brighter than last time I saw her. The utility knife gets pushed slightly harder, okay no joking with the angry pretty marine lady.

"Good afternoon" she corrected pleasantly in a way that said a lot about her feelings about me at this moment. Feelings involving a battery, and a pair of jumper cables. "G-Good afternoon then. Umm may I ask you a question?" She continued smiling and nodded "Okay, umm, why do you have a knife to my throat"

I feel its good to directly address problems when dealing with others, beating around the bush can make things worse.

"So glad you asked. Let me answer it with another question. One minute I'm bleeding out in a trench while defending my Overlord, the next thing I know I'm in tremendous pain. And keep in mind, when I say tremendous pain, I've lost an arm and had my legs completely crushed before"

_'she got better apparently..' _

"And once said agony passed I wake up to find a naked pervert standing over my body. Care to explain what happened?"

_'Man I am so fucked. Well lets go with plan A then: Be as honest and direct as possible.'_

"Eer well If I had to guess, I'd say you passed out in said trench, and then got summoned by some idiot who had no clue what the hell he was doing, umm summoned you but was supprised so he stopped half way, and then he realized you where in pain because of it where he then put as much energy as he could into finishing..whatever it was that brought you here..Umm he may have been naked because he didn't where he could get cloths, wasn't expecting company, and sorta forgot?"

She looked a bit shocked and the knife moved away '_Yay!'_ however that didn't last long as she put the knife back in place _'Damn it!' _

"What the hell do you mean summoned? Explain!" she ordered.

"Umm well" she pushed the knife a bit harder just breaking the skin.

_'Cut that out you psycho chick!... Eer that was a very unfortunate choice of words. Hmm, I think ill demote her from cute blue haired elf girl, to psycho chick with knife. At this point the best we can hope for at this point, is for her to be be upgraded to the cute psycho chick with knife i- '_

The knife pressing against some portion of my neck I'm sure was importance broke my mental attempt to run away and lured a hurried response out of me.

"I-was-messing-with-this-energy-i-found-i-could-manipulate-and-it-went-into-a-tree-and-suddenly-you-replaced-it-please-dont-kill-me" I said as quickly as possible

She blinked. Then again, before taking the pressure off as I took a break I hadn't realized I was putting off. "Okay, once again but slower" she said, surprisingly less angry.

"I was messing with this weird energy I found and was trying to learn how to manipulate it to see if I could use it and it went into a tree and all of a sudden you popped in and took its place. Eer, please don't kill me?"

I would say I have a lot of pride as a person, However I feel begging for your life is one of those things that should be an option for everyone. I also feel that if someone is begging for their life you should let them keep it if at all possible. I seriously hope she shares the sentiment.

For a while she just glared as if she was sizing me up before taking off the pressure once more

"...If you're lying..If you brought me here just to 'have some fun' before you got rid of me again, I WILL kill you" she said glaring daggers. _'Heh daggers.'_

_'Wait. She though I was..WHAT THE HELL?!' _

It honestly hadn't even occurred to me, I had been thinking she thought I was some kind of flasher or something. It's definitely not the first place my mind goes. How often do you think of setting someone, you don't knows, apartment on fire while they are asleep?

But now that she said it hit me how bad this looked from her perspective. If I thought another guy was pulling that kind of shit, I'd not only be all for her current attitude, I'd likely be in favor of a mandatory beating just on basic principle.

_'Okay she is getting upgraded back to the cute blue haired girl again,...well, cute/scary army girl.' _

I looked at her straight in the eyes and nodded "I've got no problem with that" She seemed to be checking for sincerity which was fortunate as I was telling the truth, and she seemed confident she would spot me lying if I was. One more moment passed before she sighed, and finally put away her utility knife, and she took her boot off of me.

Upon seeing tiny steel spikes on the bottom of the souls, It took a moment to realize the only reason they didn't put me in a LOT of pain was she had been grinding them into the sphere in my chest. Apparently they are made of pretty stern stuff as they didn't even have a scratch. Its nice to know the likely brittle substance my body is made out of at least has a decent threshold before they start breaking down.

I started to get back up before she pushed me back down. "What do you think your doing?"

"Umm getting up?"

"I think your forgetting a something" she looked at me irritatedly.

It took me a moment. "It's because I'm naked?" '_Heh, man I'm suave'_

I could feel her eye twitch, though her eyes didn't move from mine. "Yes. Because your naked."

You might think I should be getting extremely embarrassed or something about all this, but recall earlier that I made my body seemed based upon how I mentally thought my body should be. Do you think anyone who's body was shaped by their subconscious views and desire would have anything resemble what they would consider physical imperfections? I'll give you a hint. No.

Oh granted its not perfect, I think I still have my nose that is just a tad on the large side. But if I didn't have it I wouldn't look quite like me. It is however the ideallic version of said schnoz .

Its also of note that once you've already been exposed and if you have no real source of insecurities nudity surprisingly not that embarrassing. Though I can easily understand her not wanting to have to walk around with a naked stranger.

Down sides of the afterlife (so far): Everything is weird, I have no clue what the fuck is going on, and I've already almost died, again. Once. Upsides: Body-of-olympian and cool powers. So far I'm breaking even. Wait forgot got hit in the face by Ms. Cute-Army-Girl . Okay so far, I'm a bit in the negative.

Going back to my current problems however. I asked, "So do you have any ideas for that?"

She huffed, "Your the one with the summoning powers, just use some Spiritual Power and will it into clothing."

"Shove energy, will it into clothing, Got it. Umm, Spirit is the blue glowey stuff I can see if I focus right"

She paused eyeballed me for a moment where I assumed the look of a innocent lost puppy. Not sure how effective it is but I suspect my honestly not knowing, coupled with the shiner she added doesn't hurt. Finally eventually broke,with a grumbling sigh. "Yes, spirit is the..glowy stuff."

I found my core once again, which apparently held my "spiritual energy" or whatever it was, and I thought what happened last time.

_'Okay so before everything went to shit I was trying to figure out how this worked and I was shoving the blu..Spirit. '_ I mentally corrected myself,

_'The Spiritual Power while wishing I had someone to talk to, or something like that.' Maybe I need to put it in the form of a wish?'_

I pulled my Spirit together and pushed it into the earth once again, I heard a vague buzzing from outside but ignored it for now. Concentrating on the energy in the earth I thought _' I wish I had clothing' _I added a quick mental image of what I thought would be comfortable.

A tiny bit of the it disappeared into a few rocks and the rest just sat there in the ground. Unsure what to do I simply tried to pull it back. It didn't seem to want too but I eventually got it to return.

Only now did I notice that the amount of energy I had to manipulate seemed to be a lot smaller than before my little SNAFU with military girl. _'Wow. Okay, note to self, ask only person you've met in who knows how long her name.'_

As I came too a familiar, lovely voice greeted me.

"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!"


	4. Chapter 4

"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!" the blue haired harpy yelled, as I roused from my mediation.

I'm not entirely sure if it would actually qualify as meditation given the lack of peace and serenity. On the other hand I've been using mystical energy to do magick and that makes me a wizard until someone tells me otherwise. And a wizard is always meditating if he says he is, Gandalf told me so. Blatent inserting words into fictional characters mouths aside, Cute-Scary-Blue-Haired-Army-Girl whose name I seriously need to find out looked spooked.

"Umm what was what?" my voice apparently had a minor calming effect so she was now only yelling instead of screeching. Fortunately I don't need ears for anything other than hearing so I would be good to go regardless of her yelling point blank at me.

"You just used Mana!" she accused.

"Umm is that a bad thing?" What does using Mana cause a kitten to get smitten or something...Shit I hope not.

"Why did you use Mana?!"

Hey I know this one! "Because you told me too?" Take that, Cute-Army-Girl.

"I told you to do the same thing you did to summon me!" She seemed to be panicking for some reason.

"I DID!" I yelled back, surprising her, which caused her to flinch back. After a couple of minutes it seemed we where done talking for a little while at least as she seemed to withdraw into herself.

I took a moment to check on my cloths situation, and I was feeling pretty happy with the results. The two most prevalent items where first the pants I'd gone for. Black long and very baggy, tied off by straps at the ankle. They looked like Ninja pants except I tied them a lot lower than mid-calf. I also made sure it was known I wanted pockets. Word to the wise, always include pockets on pants if able.

On my feet I had a pair of very rugged sandals that had straps to attach them to the ankle and front of the foot, and a piece of material connecting the two on both sides. I might have imagined a bit over on the straps, but my last pair of sandals where flip-flops and I wanted to be able to actually run in these.

The reason I didn't go for boots or sneakers, was actually a bit of pragmatism on my part. I had no idea what a closed shoe would look like that accounted for the big honking gem growing out of the top of each foot, but I could imagine a scenario,where the gem force the opposing side of my food down unnaturally resulting in terrible blisters, and badly irritated the area around the protrusion until who knows what happened. Everything my imagination came up with involved a lot of pain. So now I have a pair of sandals. They where very comfortable even if I didn't recognize the material. Looked to be some kind of hide, but a lot more comfortable than you'd expect. Hopefully they work out well enough.

The other distinct item of clothing was white, long hooded mantle, I had opted for instead of the shirt, and for much the same reasons I avoided shoes. I didn't like the idea of constant abrasion on strange inorganic outcropping. In no way did it have to do with the fact I suddenly had found myself with a six pack and wanted to show off.

The cloak itself was heavy, but breathed well enough. And comfortably fell over my shoulders. To be honest, f I was happier that it could double as a blanket as well, sooner or later I will need to go to sleep.

The last two things I made where in large part thanks to Cute-Army-Girl while she was in her Psycho-Knife phase.

Two things she wore that seemed like a good idea to just have handy. The first being a tough pair of gloves. No clue what mine where made out of once again. I just gave a mental description of what I wanted, and now I had a pair made of some kind of lizard scale I think. But they where akin to very nice leather gloves. They had holes where the orbs would be, but I had neglected to put them on thus far.

The other was a pair of tinted goggles. No idea why I would need them, but I can easily imagine a dust storm where we are right now and that alone validated their existence. Plus Cute-Army-Girl has a pair and she seems pretty on top of things.

Honestly I hadn't put nearly as much detail into them when I actually made them, it was more along the lines of 'Give me something I would feel comfortable wearing, that has these qualities.'

I'm sure there are a million thing else I should have thought of. Armor comes to mind, but honestly I have no idea what armor consist of in this world. Sure I could try and imagine up some weird sci-fi carbon-nano thingy armor but what if everyone uses beam swords. I'm pretty sure nano-thingys would not work very well against that.

Also I had no idea at the time what kind of power what I had already decided was going to take at the time.. I figured on the basis of matter manipulation and the assumption of whatever I asked for is what it would try to give me. Had I wished for "Impervious, universal, invincible armor" I would have had every ounce of my energy, and then some, drained trying to make it.

I think their was a rule on the Evil Overlord List about not absorbing an energy field larger than your head. I think a Corollary should be present,along the lines of if I can create an energy field I won't make one larger than my head, at least not without appropriate testing at much smaller sizes first.

It may seem odd that my first inclination is to armor up, but think of it from this angle. I died, and now in the afterlife I find a distinct lack of paradise and civilization, which means I have no idea what kind of shit im going to run into. The only person I've met had a knee-jerk reaction was; Take utility knife, apply to neck. So yea.

I also had a pair of silk boxers, If only so I wouldn't have to go alfresco.

Its worth mentioning that while my outfit would take a bit to describe, it only took a few moments to actually go over my ensemble, which unfortunately means I have to deal with Cute-Army-Girl who looks upset, and I don't know why..

"Hey you okay?" I asked, voicing my concern. It seemed to snap her out of her withdrawn state at least.

"Umm, I'm fine. So is that your outfit?"

"Yep what do you think?" _'Yes, praise me for the good job I did.'_

"You look silly" she smirked. _'Oh god damn it.'_

"..Gee thanks. Anyways, what had you so upset earlier?" That snapped her back to attention. She seemed to be thinking about her answer. After weighing her reply she answered.

"You haven't been using Spiritual Power, you've been using Mana." Ha take that universe, one more point towards the I'm a wizard camp.

"And using Mana is a bad thing I take it" I asked as I crossed my arms and sat on a nearby rock.

"Well, no not inherently, its just that..the only people who can really naturally manipulate Mana are Overlords, and sometimes those in their service."

_'...well that's not totally ominous.'_ I thought foreboding

"And you believe that I might be an Overlord?"

She nodded. "Yes it seems the most likely scenario given that you summoned me. I had originally thought you where some strange off-branch of Skull-Magician that screwed up his first casting. But then you went and used so much Mana. It just doesn't make any sense that someone could live long enough to gather as much Mana as you have, yet still suck enough to screw up that badly on a spell."

I was going to feel indignant but then she shivered at the memory, making me feel like a first class asshole instead.

"Anyways, looking back we where in a pretty bad way overall, our Overlords castle was pretty messed up. So I can't see having lived through it, and If they lost theirs no way they would have been able to resurrect me. You being my new Overlord is the only thing that makes any sense. What I don't understand is that I can remember my previous life. I've never heard of anything like that normally when an Overlord spawns a vassal they have no memories."

Hmm, maybe I was some kind of Overlord Skull-Magician thingy..That sent an odd feeling of familiarity for some reason but I pushed it out of my mind.

I put in my two cents. "Maybe my screwing up the spell caused it/"

_'Note to self: play with magic later and learn what you can do. Also make sure to be giddy over the prospect of being able to use magic at an appropriate time.' _

That last one would be very easy to do, cool powers are meant to be played with. Yea sure great power, responsibility, blah, blah, etc. I've never bought into not using them for personal profit on the side. For example, Superman has x-ray vision. If he started a gold mining business he could just look down through the ground and go right for the money, no one gets hurt, he can afford to pay for his adopted parents heart operation, take Ms. Lane on nice dates, etc. You know most supervillans would do better if they did so as well. Anyways, Cute-Army-Girl started talking again.

"It's possible I guess. Do you remember what you where thinking when you called me here?"

I tried to remember, but honestly I was fuzzy at best "Not the exact wording but I think I was messing with my Mana and thought something along the lines of 'I wish I had someone to help explain how all this stuff works.' sorry I sorta forgot once you showed up as I was panicking trying to fix my screw up."

She smirked, "Well at least you know when you do something stupid, that puts you ahead of most Overlords already."

"You would think being someones Overlord would would earn you some respect." I added dryly.

"Respect is earned." She smirked. Besides, to me you'll always be the idiot who forgot to put on some pants.."

That's not my fault damn it. I didn't even know I could make clothing. Actually I might of figured out how too if I hadn't called her.

I let out a sigh. No real point in arguing.

"So. Now what do we do?" I asked. I summoned her to help me out, might as well ask for her help.

She thought for a minute. "Well I guess you summoned me to help you out. So our first goal is to teach you how to use your Spiritual Power. Mana is good for making things and for long term results. But Spiritual Power is what you need for combat."

We sat down and she started to teach me how not to suck at magick.


	5. Chapter 5

"Man how do you suck this badly?" she asked forlornly.

Ugg, I can't even say anything. We'd been at it for over five hours and I still cannot find where my damn Spiritual Power pool is. About three hours in we got in a big argument where she blamed me calling me an idiot and I called her an bitch for blaming the student when the teacher sucked. She wasn't a good teacher for this kind of thing, thats for sure. I'ts kind of obvious now that this would be something she isn't good at, I mean i'v been calling her Cute-Army-Girl all this time, not Cute-Magic-Girl. I must have hit a cord because she got really upset and I spent the next twenty minutes being silly and trying to cheer her up. At least we are getting along better. Speaking of Cute-Army-Girl That reminds me.

"Hey, I know this is probably a bit late, but umm, Whats your name?" She blinked.

"Well you haven't given me one yet."

That one threw me off a bit. "What do you mean?"

"Well when an Overlord spawns someone anew, they give them a name because newly made units don't have any hard-coded memories, just instincts on how to perform their Classification. So the first thing you get when you're, well born I guess, is a name." I nodded "So an overlords job is to Name people?"

She nodded, but looked thoughtful and added. "Sort of, actually they only name units they make. Some units are spawned naturally. Across the Netherworld only about one in a thousand are made by Overlords, the rest are born from the area they live in." I had to ask "Wait so people just..Pop out of the ground or something?" That was weird, and to my surprise she nodded to my assessment. "Yea, basically, Though its more accurate to say that the Mana in the area ends up too concentrated and whatever soul is nearest ends up in a body. In that case the unit names themselves." Something about that explanation bothered me, but something else caught my attention.

"Wait what do you mean soul?" I got a look that said she was wondering if I was messing with her but explained anyways.

"Here in the netherworld everyone is more or less waiting to receive a true-reincarnation. So we all are just cooling our heels and trying to live as best we can until we get our shot."

I had to ask "Wait aren't we supposed to to go eternal paradise or eternal suffering when we die" I distinctly recall that descriptor of the afterlife, it was fairly even across the board. To my surprise she snorted

"Sure, if you've been very good or very bad. But what do you do with the people who where borderline? Or who did a lot of bad things but weren't completely at fault. Or the people who where horrible people but did good things because society expected it of them. They all end up in here. The people who where distinctly more good end up in a Celestial Netherworld with all the other more good people.

The rest end up in regular ones, usually made by an overlord. I've got a theory I've been running with that Overlords act as beacons for certain types of people. Completely evil irredeemable people usually end up near the completely evil overlords. It doesn't help that by netherworld standards, trying to give off the appearance of being evil is the social norm."

"Unfortunately we are our own tormentors for whatever bad things we may of done in life, and until you undergo enough hardship. If you reincarnate enough you eventually can get another shot at life. So in a round about way the worst in the Netherworld are actually doing the most to facilitate people into their next life."

Okay that niggling feeling in the back of my brain was really itching now, but I my gut told me I would be happier ignoring it for as long as possible. So I did.

"Okay that messed up, but I think I get the gist of it. Could you explain the Reincarnation thing though?" She talked about it like there where multiple types.

"Well first off there are two different types of reincarnation. True-reincarnation is the ultimate goal of many and deathly avoided by some. True-reincarnation is when you get another shot at life. Some people avoid it because while in the Netherworld you are essentially immortal and can do whatever you want. So many would rather just go with that instead of risking eternal suffering.

"The other type of Reincarnation is a bit different, It happens when you die in the netherworld but haven't earned your true-reincarnation yet. It's what essentially happened to me. I died in the service of my last overlord. My soul was released back into the netherworld. You created me a new body. The only reason I likely remember details is because you screwed up." She paused "Though now that I think about it, It might be because the way you worded the wish. Same results either way."

I didn't really say anything as I'm not sure how to follow that one. Anyways It was a lot to take in.

"Man you seem to know a lot of this stuff" That earned me a tiny blush and a small smile.

"Yea, I'm... I was, the person in charge of the fighting forces for my last overlord, He let me take care most of the business end while he just screwed around." She added with some disdain.

"Still I ended up learning a lot, and ended up earning a lot of respect, even from neighboring Overlords." She was clearly proud of herself, she must have really kicked some ass.

"Hnn, he does that mean your like a bad ass fighter or something" To my surprise she sighed.

"Unfortunately no. Overlords have the ability to intentionally reincarnate their underlings, and because being bound to your overlord lets you keep most of your skills, but you add onto the old you had. You always loose a bit, The more the overlord wants you to keep, the more Mana it takes, but you also get a very nice boost in ability as well as you become less just a new person and more the same person with new stuff added. Simply put, I remember winning some really tough fights, but I don't recall the details on how I did it."

Some part of my brain told me that made sense, though I wasn't sure I agreed.

"You only keep your skill during reincarnation when an overlord chooses to reincarnates someone already bound to them. Unfortunately the skill I had gained isn't a core part of who I am, so no carry over. I think I might of carried over some of the things I learned about commanding a force, but that would just be because I grew into my role. And in case your wondering, I don't know why the system works like it does, I just know it works." We sat in a comfortable silence for a few minutes, her reminiscing and me going over my impromptu lesson on how my new 'home' works.

"Hey what was your name before?" I asked

"Before?" she looked confused so I elaborated.

"In your last life, what was your name? Did you like it?" I asked

"It was Mya, and yes." she said quietly. [AN: Pronounced, my-uh.]

"Eer well, if you don't mind then , can I call you that?"

I got my first full genuine smile. _'YAY!'_ Call me an idiot but I've always enjoyed making other people smile, if you accomplished nothing but making a few people happy on a given day. You still had a pretty alright day.

"I'd like that, thank you." I smiled back at her.

However she stood up and stretched. "However, now that we've had our little break, you need to get back to learning how to access your Spiritual Power."

I let out a sigh, _'Damn it Mya, just when I was starting to warm up to you...'_


	6. Chapter 6

Another hour was lost to me trying to find where my supposed Spiritual Power core. Before I gave a disgruntled sigh and leaned back to lay down. "Ugh, It's just no use. Maybe I don't have one?" It's possible I mean I've searched for a long time.

Mya looked annoyed, but seemed to be seriously considering it, she probably felt like giving up as well. "No everyone in the netherworld has spiritual power, even the crappiest Prinny has spiritual power."

My brain full-stopped.

"I'm sorry, the what?"

_'No fucking way.'_

"The weakest Prinny, honestly how do you not know any of this. Everyone else in the Netherworld at least knows SOME of this stuff on a subconscious level. Even if you didn't know some of the details you should have at least some instinctual knowledge."

I didn't know this stuff on an unconscious level. I recognized it on a conscious level, my brain's subconscious had simply refused to acknowledge it. Once again, _'No fucking way'_

Okay lets not jump to conclusions, they just happen to have the same name right?

"These Prinnies; Small, typically blue and white penguins, peg legs with little wing. Say 'Dood' a lot. Have a tendency to explode?"

Mya smiled, ignorant to my growing horror. "Finally something you know! Yea Prinnies are souls who are borderline to their True-Reincarnation. A lot of them tend to be lazy though, because if they don't do a good enough job as Prinnies, they will be reborn again as demons instead and...hey you okay?" she asked with a look of concern."

So as It turns out my brain had been mentally suppressing this possibility. And now that I can't suppress it, I have to confront it in all its messed up glory.

I many have not been concealing my emotions very well.

"I...yea..no." I took a few deep breaths.

_'Okay I'm freaking out a little bit.' _

"Just checking something..umm" I tried to think of a good question.

"Hey earlier you mentioned Mages and Magicians, could you tell me a bit about them"

She blinked eying me warily. Most likely because I was currently freaking out, and likley looked a little crazed because I was trying to hide and/or suppress it.

"Well, I've fought a few before, though my previous Overlord never made any, as he preferred us soldier types. Infantry, Commanders, Mechanics, you get the idea. I think he dated a Mage at once and got burned. Anyways They generally come in The three main magic types. Wind, Fire, and Ice. I fought one that could use all three before, and lemme tell you that sucked. I heard some powerful ones could another element called Star which doesn't target any weaknesses, I think, but I never fought any. That's about it I think. Why the sudden interest?" She asked, after her explanation.

I should not say. "You wouldn't believe me."

she narrowed her eyes. "Tell me." She stated curtly. She is still likely irritated from earlier. She also has proven that she is quite capable of knocking my ass out.

_'Pfft, okay you asked for it'_

"I played multiple video-games when I was still alive that all correlate exactly to the last two things you just told me. Pinnies, the Magic. Spiritual power was just listed as 'SP' . They where all turn based strategy that had a heavy emphasis on grinding. The company that makes them frequently crosses them over with each other all the time. Your explanations have been bothering me because they have been reminding me of it and now it seems that im somehow in said universe, which is impossible. Maybe I'm sitting in a hospital bed right now and this is all a bad dream which means I just need to think of a way to wake myself up. Okay so-"

As I had been explaining my composure had slowly been slipping. However before I could truly get into a good freak-out Mya's fist had introduced itself to my midsection knocking the wind out of me.

As I looked up glaring daggers, she looked back with disinterest. "You where starting to loose it so I though I'd distract you." Definitely a demon...

"First off, if you start acting like your in a dream or something else equally stupid, ill be happy to hit you until you change your mind, understand?" I nodded glaring daggers.

_'Fairly certain you can't get the wind knocked out of you in a dream..' _

"Secondly, I'm sorry for hitting you like that, but I can't have you running around acting like an idiot and getting yourself killed."

I tried to wheeze out something decidedly not polite, however that didn't work, so I sat back and just emitted my anger at her. If looks could kill she would have been maimed at the very least. She looked right back at me and sighed.

"I'm not going to apologize more than once for doing something that may of saved your life. Even if it was just preventing you from doing something stupid."

I had to begrudgingly accept that one, I didn't like it one bit however.

I have a short list of things that actually piss me off. Bodily harm to my person is decidedly one of them.

"Okay so your story...was pretty out there. But it's just in the realm of possibility, so for now ill buy it."

_'Holy shit she believed me!? Hell I don't even believe me, and I know it happened!'_

I had caught my breath enough try and speak again.

Funfact, it takes a couple of minutes to get your breath back if you get the wind knocked out of you.

"Wh-y?" came out the ragged question.

"Few reasons actually. First and foremost is you can't use your Spiritual Power. Like I said earlier, even the crappiest Prinny is aware of how to do that from the moment they gain physical form. Even if they have no memories whatsoever, they can use it just fine. Secondly there are an unbelievable amount of Netherworlds that connect to who knows how many Earths . I don't really know what the odds are of what apparently happened occurring, but It seems like it is possible though..." She scratched her head I thought.

"Reason for memories?" I asked choppily. My breathing had returned mostly to normal but wasn't very well under control. Have I mentioned before how ludicrously strong her dainty arms are?

She sat down and settled her arm between her head and knee in a thinking position.

"Hmm, could be that the system didn't pick you up because you already knew a bunch of stuff about the Netherworld? It might not be what you needed, but you did have a knowledge base. We'll probably never know." She commented.

My breathing had finally normalized so I started adding my portion to the conversation.

"Hey why did you need me to stay alive anyways? Couldn't you just write me off?" This had actually confused me for a while now.

"No, not if you summoned me. Well I mean I could its just i'm better of making sure you don't die suddenly."

I gave her look asking her to elaborate. Which she did, prefaced with a familiar sigh. I've been getting those a lot.

"Right, no instinctual knowledge. Okay so some Netherworld basics." She paused to organize her thoughts.

"Okay, all inhabitants of both the Netherworld and Celestia are born two different ways. They are either Summoned, in which a Class type is chosen, then a soul which easily fits that class type is put into a body made of Mana. This souls is bound to the body, which is then bound to the overlord. At any time an overlord can destroy the body of his summoned minion, and can choose to separate their bond anchoring the soul instead of making them a new one like they would if they where reincarnating them, The benefit of doing so is they keep the old instincts, but get the new ones as well.

"The other way is they can be naturally born. This is actually the majority of the Netherworld population. Essentially enough Mana gathers in a location and a nearby soul find themselves suddenly in a body, the type of which is based upon the area. As an overlord you can do this yourself to make monsters that are likewise loyal to you, but you need to find an area where that monster type shows up regularly."

"Now you are my acting anchor to my current form, so if you die there is a very good chance my body will collapse in the backlash. You may not realize this but there is a very intense competition to actually get a physical form. Because you can't really do anything without one. If you want an example for how bad it is, then you should know all the weather in the Netherworld if formed by the conflict between the almost completely intangible souls trying to get a physical form."

"I heard there are means to have children the way people do on earth, but I never cared enough to actually check into it."

I felt a little used to be honest.

"So you basically are just making sure you don't loose your meal ticket, or something like that"

She nodded "More or less. I do feel like I'd like to help you out though. Some demons even who are summoned would rather try to kill you and risk dispelling their forms if they thought they could get away with it."

_'Thanks for small favors I suppose.'_

"Hey while we are on the subject, I was wondering what being a demon entails exactly, I think you mentioned it a while back but I didn't ask."

"Eer not much too it really. If your sentient and born in the netherworld you are a demon. If your born in Celestia your an Angel.

The nature of the places changes some of your baser instincts. Demons enjoy dark places and always have at least decent night vision. Demons are also a lot more prone to violence, and being self centered. Hmm, culturally demons are encouraged to be Evil as well, but I mean if you actually look at the stuff most demons do its not actually as bad as they make it out to be.

"One thing though most aren't actually that bad, one thing to keep in mind is that there are some pretty evil souls out there too. Though keep in mind the whole 'we are our own punishment' thing. We get anyone who doesn't make the cut for Celestia, so for the most part just some punks who get their kicks before being reborn."

"Some have really dedicated themselves to their demonic instincts. Those are the ones you have to watch out for, just heads up on that. And be mindful that your instincts may make you do something you will regret later on."

We each spent a short while thinking quietly over our conversation, and what was aid, before Mya broke the silence.

"So what was your name when you where alive.?"

_'Daww, we're gonna have a moment again.'_

I told her, she blinked. Then she started laughing in my face.

_''Bitch...'_

"That's a terrible name for an overlord!" she managed to sputter out between guffawing.

_'It's not that bad'_

Though if I thought about it it wasn't great either.

"We need you a new name to go by, besides your old life ended anyways, now you need a name for your new one."

"Fine"

We both threw out names I could go by, she said mine where terrible but hers where all along the line of 'Bloodbane" or "Maldoom'. Granted the Maldoom sounded fairly cool, it wasn't a real name.

eventually I just started throwing out the names I'd come up for characters in videogames.

Letting out a sigh I added the latest to the list of names one of us hated. ", What about Enki?"

And for once she paused.

"Hmm Overlord Enki, Not bad. Yea lets go with that then."

I was tired of making up names, and a spades a spade, a rose is a rose, etc. Easier to just go with it.

With that done, I had to say I had a much better handle on my, insanely weird, situation.

We could finally, we could move on to other things.

"So," I asked, "back to finding my spirit?"

She made a face, then got a shit eating grin. And said. Yea, and I just had an idea.

_'I do not like that grin'_

"you know, it just occurred to me. You don't seem to have the insincts most demons do, so maybe we can find a way to bring them to the surface."

_'I do not like where this is going'_

"Mya, what do you mean. What are you doing" She got up and was walkig over to me popping her knuckles.

"Just this. dodge!" and her fist impacted the ground with a deep resounding,

**Thud**

"Mya stop!" I yelled pleadingly. To no avail.

It's just not my day...


	7. Chapter 7

**BOOM**

Sounded another explosion arcoss the plane as I got burned and bludgeoned. Again.

Mya thought is was hilarious.

"Well at least you've figured out how to use your spiritual energy" she said between snickering.

Our little engagement worked out to be about ten minutes.

It took about one minute before I tried to fight back.

At one minute three seconds, I realized just how much she outclassed me in every freaking way.

And the remaining nine or so minutes where spent with me getting my ass handed to me while I tried to hit her. Finally I got so frustrated I exploded. Literally.

So as it turns out spiritual power requires a certain emotional aspect to initiate. I'm easy going by nature which apparently was acting as a mental block, and accessing it requires you to need to want it bad enough. Or that's what I concluded with Mya's little lecture on it.

Once I managed to actually use it It was really easy to find. Apparently I was looking way to deep for it because I had assumed incorrectly it was like Mana. Really it's more like right below the skin, ready to be used. It flows a lot easier than Mana, and I have a lot less of it apparently. Or mana is just that much more effective. Anyways, now that I found it, I had to learn to use it. Which Mya thus far has been enjoying my failure to do so as thus far the only 'spell' I can use is "self-destruct"

The first time was right in front of my face and sent me tumbling back...as did the next three times that followed it.

As I said, Mya thought it was hilarious.

"Mya, lets work on something else..at least until I'm not chard and bruised?"

I felt like crap to be honest. Between the ass kicking I'd taken over the coarse of the day and the numerous explosions I'd been exposed to, I felt terrible and I must of looked worse because she agreed.

She still took a moment laughing at my expense before she made an effort to compose herself.

"Yea sure thing. Just remember you need to practice later on. its important to learn how to enhance attacks. Which reminds me, we need to get some weapons, and shelter, and food."

"_You only think of this now?"_

"Shut up, getting you to not being a complete failure was more important." She snapped.

_'Shit must have thought that out loud..' _

Her comment pissed me off a bit, but no way could I take her, and the need for continual survival triumphed out in the end.

"So what should we do?" I asked, ignoring her mood swing from laughing at my expense, to snippy for my comment.

"Hmm, well we really need a place to stay, demons can go a very long time without food an water, but we don't wanna get caught unarmed. Going without a shelter comes as a close second. Weapons will let us fight back, though given how week the Mana is in this area there is little chance for anyone else to show up. But having a dependable location to house our forces will let you recruit some more demons. For food..I don't know I always just yelled at some Prinnies and let them worry about it. Also we can throw our Prinnies and anyone who attacks our base, so win-win"

_'Not if your a Prinny, Then again I don't know how they feel about being used as an impromptu grenade by other demons. For all I know they see it as a chance to get out of work. From what I recall Prinnies would frequently try to slack off whenever they got a change although, given their employers...'_ I shook off the thought because it wasn't really getting me anywhere.

"All right we need weapons, so where do we get some?"

"No clue" she responded with a smile, sometimes I don't know if she is messing with me or not...

"Generally," she continued, "you pay a merchant to get them for you. Though merchants are rare amongst the netherworld. Hmm We also need a healer with the resurrection ability. Hmm, well for now I think the best way to start is to make a base of operations. If you build it they will come right?"

_'And the sad part is, this is the best idea we have'_

"SO how do we build this base of operations?"

She shrugged. "Well you could try making a crapload of Prinnies and letting them do the work, or you could try to wish one out of Mana?"

"Any preference?" I asked. Either way sounded fine to me.

"hmm, well the Prinnies absolutely have to be paied even if its only a tiny amount to get them to do any work at all. Something about having to pay off any outstanding debts or something. You also should expect to pay allowances to anyone under your command, so they don't have to find spending cash elsewhere." she said giving me a look that made sure I knew she was included in that lot.

_'Your charity knows no bounds Mya'_

"So, unless you have a bunch of money hidden away, the plan is to find somone who is weak enough that we could beat up for cash even without weapons, that going to be a bit tricky to do."

_'So we are essentially at the level of beating up kids for their lunch money...'_

"On the other hand making anything out of Mana can be very costly. Non-living, physical things are the cheapest category of things you could make with Mana so its doable, but I don't know how much you have."

_'So basically that's the only viable option, and if I don't have enough we are back to square one.'_

"Hey if it's cheap to make non-living physical things, why can't I just try to magic up some weapons?"

She smiled slightly glad I was at least using my noggin for something other than getting exploded. "It would be nice but anything you summoned wouldn't be any better for us than using a random rock instead of our fist.

Actually our fist more effective than an average rock. Useable weapons are magically reinforced to be tougher than the mountain destroying demons who wield them. Otherwise what would be the point?"

I nodded. _'Damn I was hoping to cheat my way out of that one. Oh well then, might as well start.'_

I sat down next to the crater I awoke in, as we haden't exactly moved far away from it, to try and see if I couldn't pull another one out of my ass.

Mya was surprised at my sudden sitting.. "Hey what are you doing?" she asked

I shrugged slightly, "Well I was going to try to make a base, and if I can't we can go from there."

However Mya seemed to be surprised by this, "Wait, don't you want to find a better area first? I mean we can go find a nicer place to start our base of operations. From what I can tell this is in the middle of nowhere!"

I blinked before I replied. "Err, well I sorta think I already sorta claimed this place when I first arrived and made a body. So I don't think I can really choose a different place right now anyways."

She pinched the area where her nose met her forhead. "Ugg you have the weirdest overlord power set. i'v ever heard of you seem to be all over the place.."

"Power set?" I asked despite myself .

She looked at me blankly before hollowed out a response;

"Each overlord has their own abilitys which allows them to rule, its how they interact with their Mana and vassals. It can affect all their subjects in the realm or be completely unnoticeable. Your said you could just wish for things while messing with your Mana and they happened. Your binding yourself to an area. It's weird, even for an overlord."

She seemed depressed "You know, I'm starting to think you're a demon of misfortune or something, everything you do seem to suck.."

_'Bite me Mya.' _

"Huh guess so, lemme know if there is anything I could do to help with your self image though." I try to play nice, but sometimes inner sarcasm wins out. She realized she implicated herself in that throw away comment, and huffed in annoyance, but I was already starting to tune her out.

It only took a moment to find my Mana this time, given I had seen it earlier over and over again, when I was trying to find my Spirit I can't say I would have any reason to be surprised by how quickly I found it. What was surprising however was how much I there was once I started to try to push it into the ground. Apparently It had recovered a bit from the last time I actually used it. I hadn't bothered messing with it sense the beginning of my Spirit training.

Grabbing the Mana I took as much as I could and let it flow into ground and crater which was already down to bedrock so I figured that would hopefully be enough to make it stable. I'm not an architect but hey gotta use what you do know. Once that was done, I mentally projected.

_'I wish I had a fortress'_

I paused..and nothing happened. Well, ill try again.

_'I wish I had a castle' _Again nothing happened

_'Arg, I wish this shit was as easy to do as it was in the game!' _

To my horror, the Mana responded, flowing like a river back into me, and towards my forehead where a splitting pain was starting to form. My last thought before unconsciousness overtook me;

_'Man Mya is going to give me so much shit for this'_

Then I blacked out.


	8. Chapter 8

I came too with a groan a couple of hours later as it was nighttime.

_'Huh, the moons white instead of red. Looks a lot bigger though than it used too. Maybe I arrived during the Prinny reincarnation thingy.'_

It was one of the sub plots I liked a lot from the first Disgaea game.

"So I see my beloved Overlord has finally awaken from his nap. I can't wait to hear what you've fucked up this time. Other than your forehead. Your running out of room to accessorize by the way."

"Shut up Mya." I barked half-heartedly from the ground, and to my surprise she did.

My head still hurt. But only moderately so. I pushed the pain aside and creaked open an eye where I saw Mya.

"You're covered in blood" She was, Mostly on her hands, but some on her fatigues and face.

She blinked before waving it off. "No worries, it's mostly yours anyways. You sat down for a couple of minutes then you suddenly made this weird grunting- girly screaming noise"

For the record I do not have a girly scream.

"Then all of a sudden you spout another stone thing out of your forehead. Anyways, it was bleeding a lot and I didn't want you to bleed out so I took a shot in the dark and tried to keep pressure on the area around it, not sure how well it worked or if it was needed, but hey your alive so there ya go."

_'I was perfectly happy thinking she was a bitch, and then she goes and pulls shit like this' _

"Thanks for that" I said with complete sincerity. She seemed somewhat thrown off by my thanks, but then smiled.

"No problem, you can pay me back later, in cash." she said jokingly, at least I think she was joking.

Regardless I plan on doing so, Evil Overlord rule number i-dunno, I will reward those who save my life, it will encourage them to do so again. Or something like that. Being an literal Overlord it seems appropriate to borrow where applicable and the Netherworld from what I could recall seemed like the kind of place that kind of attitude would reap benefits.

Deciding to investigate her earlier statements I tentatively touched my forehead.

'Man this thing is going to drive me crazy.' I had a tendency to rub my forehead when I was thinking or frustrated, and now I have a stone that could fit comfortably in my palm growing out of it. It felt like the rest of the stones I already had. Maybe it was flatter and thus protruded a bit less, but otherwise it felt the same overall. Except it was inflamed as all Hell. The skin for a good portion around it had the signs of bleeding earlier which redoubled my desire to take a shower which I already wanted badly, it also felt a bit puffy and raw, and touching either it or the stone by indirect contact, hurt.

"So what happened anyways? Mya asked while I was prodding my newest Injury.

I sat up and started to explain. "So I started trying to use my Mana got it all ready to go, at least I think I did."

"You think?" Mya interjected

"It worked making my body and summoning you didn't it?" I noted.

"Not so sure about the second one there" she added with a deadpan glare.

"Your alive aren't you?" I shot back, then I continued before she could start up again. "Anyways, so first I wished for a fortress but it didn't work. Then I wished for a Castle and that didn't work either."

"Do you know anything about defensive structures?" she asked, rubbing the bridge of her nose which I'm assuming is her default, 'What did I do to deserve this?' gesture.

"A fair amount actually" I had an engineering class where we had to design and model castles, and I did some research defensive structures.

This surprised her and she nodded approvingly, which made me happier than it really should. The toughest critics are the most pleasing to receive approval from I guess.

"Okay then,i guess assuming you knew what you where doing, How big did you make it. If it was too big there no way you could make it in one go. And your Mana shouldn't react at all,"

'Ahh, that would do it then.'

She continued, "as a rule of thumb Mana is nonreactive which is why its useless in combat as it tends to be a stabilizing force. So if you don't have enough Mana to stabilize your, 'wish' or whatever, it should fizzle. I think that may have been what happened to me" She added the last line quietly which hit me with another guilt trip.

For a simulation of how I feel, imagine you accidentally hit someone with a car, and they are sobbing in pain as you drive them to the hospital, and then you become friends, but they get this far away look sometimes whenever they remember and you know the painful memory is your fault.

_'Note to self, see if there are any Netherworld shrinks for me and Mya as we both probably will need one before we get through.'_

Mya snapped out of it, and asked "So how big where you trying for with the castle anyways?"

"Umm, big?"

"Bigger than the crater?" she asked with an annoyed glare.

The woman had a talent with glares by the way, so many emotions with one expression.

"...yes." I could see her analyzing my answer.

".A lot bigger than the crater then.." she stated, not asked.

The crater wasn't massive by any means about the size of a large house. But yea, in hindsight my mental picture of what qualified as a castle most defiantly outstripped it by a lot.

My thoughts more or less jumped to the most grandiose castles and modern fortresses I could think of. And they where so large my little impact crater would be a feature held within them.

Heh, whoopsie.

"Okay so that's why we don't have a home yet. Then what happened?" she asked tiredly, I could tell she hadn't slept very much.

"I got frustrated, and I accidentally wished my Mana was easy to use like it was in one of my games.."

She opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it again.

"Okay, for once that actually sounds like something that might turn out to be useful and honestly I'm to tired to worry about it tonight."

"Go ahead and go to sleep, ill keep watch" I had guessed what she was staying up for. Sleeping out in the open in the netherworld sounded like a good way to get mugged, and we don't have anything of value so they would probably kick our asses twice as hard for the wasted effort or something like that.

I got an honest smile from her as she nodded without complaint. So either she is really just that tired or she doesn't actually think I'm as big of a screw up as she likes to say.

She took off her vest revealing the loose tube top I forced myself to avert my eyes from as she folded the vest into an impromptu pillow. She then pulled her helmet over her eyes, but lifted it up once more to give me a parting glare. "Don't get any fresh ideas just because I'm going to sleep."

"Wouldn't dream of it psycho-knife-girl." That got me a smirk, thereafter she let herself wind down for some, somewhat deserved, R&R.

_'Only somewhat, given how she kicked my ass today' _I noted reflecting on my already healing bruises.

And then for the first time, I stood vigil over my now desolate new home.


	9. Chapter 9

You know, There is a certain beauty to a wasteland at night. I wouldn't call it majestic, or even pretty.

But its quite. Peaceful. Like there is nothing else in the world but you. Feeling like you have everything completely to yourself like that is terrible when you're alone. It's comforting when you have company.

Not that that was likely, given just how empty the desert was. I'm not sure if it is actually a desert given the trees and shrubs. But their isn't really any grass so I cant call it a plains.

It's probably for the best that I had already slept for as long as I have, because I don't think Mya had slept at all from the moment she got here.

After a while the inevitable of being board settled in.

I thought about practicing my Spirit, but if I screwed up, which was unfortunately very probably. I'd end up blasting myself and waking up Mya.

I would mess with my Mana, but who knows what changes I made, and I didn't wanna be in my happy place if any monsters arrived. Also I'm supposed to be guarding the "camp" though really its just a hole in the ground and the sleeping girl.

She snores by the way. Not loudly, or enough to be obnoxious, just enough that I could annoy about it later on. It's actually kinda cute, but I'm probably not going to mention that part. After that stopped being funny and I could stop suppressing my laughter, I was back to being board.

The night passed uneventfully, and I walked around the area. Nothing interesting really to find at all, I'm not sure if their isn't any animal life in the netherworld, or I'm just not perceptive enough to find it. I could see it either way. I'd lean towards the perception deficit simply because I know demons eat food, and that food has to come from somewhere. Unless its made through magick. I was hungry, but I hadn't really gotten hungrier despite the amount of time that had elapsed.

Come to think of it neither of us had eaten from the time our bodies where made. I guess she really wasn't joking when she said demons could go a long time without food or water, some kind of magick is likely making up the difference.

Daybreak was very pretty.

I don't think I ever watched a sunrise before. It wasn't as much fun as people make it out to be, although its often implied you do it with a special someone, so maybe I'm doing it wrong.

I sorta vegged out after a bit letting my mind blank as I looked over the vast expanse. Letting my mind wander, it mostly went to thoughts of my previous life. I guess I'm a bit of an oddity in that respect as based on Mya's explanation from earlier most demons lose their memories. Though I knew of a number of exceptions from the games.

That sent a coldness down my spine.

_'For the record, if anyone is playing this as a videogame. I hope you get hit by a truck'_

It was midday when Mya came too, where she caught me building a little fortress out of a cannibalized bush twigs, which I stacked up like Lincoln-Logs using the leaves to make a roof.

She snorted "Glad to see you spent the evening productively." she said sarcastically.

To which I replied. "Oh, I did spend the evening productively, watching for nefarious types, securing perimeters, all that kind of fun stuff. It is now however somewhere between late morning and early afternoon, and I had to do something quite that also helped stave back the mind crippling tedium, without disturbing you, and that would also allow me to keep my eyes out for anything trying to approach." That shut her up.

That little spiel along with a couple of others, was more or less prepared an hour after sunrise, once it was apparent she wasn't going to wake up soon.

I hadn't really expected to get to use any of them. Just killing time thinking along the lines of what kind of sass she might give me upon waking up, and what I could say back.

She blinked a couple of times before nodding. I apparently caught her off guard when she was waking up, so I decided to back off. Not being a morning person tends to makes you nicer to people who are just waking up, or at least that's how I am.

"Any chance you found a coffeemaker while you where securing the perimeters?" She asked, clearly not expecting me to of.

"Nope, sorry." I shrugged the offhand question aside.

I leaned back against my boulder. I noted it was likely kicked up from the crater due to the coloration and how it differed from the rest of the local geological features. I was a 'C' student in my geology class, but I had a lot of time and I did learn some things. The scorch marks helped.

"So once you wake up, whats on today's agenda? I asked. She took my words at face value because it was a minute or two before she answered.

"I think you should try again with creating a base. We really do need it. Also you need to check out the damage from your last wish." she noted.

"Actually I thought about that a bit", I said. " I think in both the short run it's going to be a very nice asset. And its going to stay that way for a while." I had a lot of time the previous evening just to think. More than I've had since I arrived.

She nodded understanding "Well that's good to hear, but could you explain why?"

I sat up, and started a bit of an extended explanation. "Okay so my biggest problem has been my lack of understanding of the netherworld. For whatever reason I don't have the instincts I'm supposed too, so it's been hit or miss with me stumbling about trying to figure out how to use my innate demonic abilities."

"Furthermore, as you said earlier, every overlord has additional abilities using Mana that they can use to interact with the world in ways normal demons can't. Am I making sense so far?" She nodded so I continued.

"Well, my last accidental wish should, in theory, put my powers into a format that I am readily able to deal with."

"Short term, I ought to be able to get a very large jump start in my ability to control whatever abilities I have, as well as give me some knowledge of what it is I can do. The only reason I can't say it doesn't give benefits in the long term Is I don't know how much limitation my wish is going to put on me, or I had in the first place. But I can most likely remove any wish-based limitations later on anyways." I concluded.

_'Also games often have some sort of exploits that can be abused.' _

So does reality, but it normally takes a genius to realize that if you curve a piece of metal just right and move air over it it starts to rise up due to the pressure difference, thus inventing artificial flight.

Human invention normally occurs when you find an event, then right rules for it, then you work to take advantage of it.

Games on the other hand have rules all laid out, skipping the hard part of noticing something unique. All you have to do is look at them long enough you will notice cool things happen if you make 'x' event happen under circumstance 'y'.

I have no actual clue if I will find one, but hey even the possibility is exciting.

Mya thought about my conclusion for bit before commenting, "you have a lot of 'could's and 'should's in that theory of yours"

"Plan 'B' , where we both crawl up in a ball and cry as we give up all hope, is still an option of course." I said dryly.

"Yea nothing is sure yet, but then again nothing has be a sure deal from the start, that's kind of been the problem. My abilities are all hit or miss, and have been coming up as miss more often than not. At least in my purview there is a chance things are going to start getting better."

I like to try to be optimistic when I can manage it. Being depressed doesn't accomplish much other than being miserable and it cuts you off from trying to see new solutions. I am however a pessimist by nature, so it can take a lot of work to pull off for me sometimes.

She snorted slightly, and threw up her hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay, fine. Not like we can just take it back anyways. Go ahead and access your Mana, and see if the changes helped at all.

I nodded, closed my eyes, and did just that.


	10. Chapter 10

I stared at the faintly glowing two dimensional box that could only be described as a menu screen

_'Holy crap it worked.'_

_I honestly hadn't actually expected it would, at least not so literally._

_The box itself was a tan with a black boarder and text. I don't recall the details well enough to really compare to the games. I assume they are similar enough._

On the Menu itself it was somewhat bare, listing the options on buttons with black labels on them; [Infusion], [Channel], [Rule Shift],[Inspect] and [Wish].

[Politics?] was also listed, just above Wish , but was grayed out.

_'If this place is hooked up to my subconscious knowledge, maybe im expecting some heavy political action? Come to think of it all the Disgaea games had some form of senate or the like ,where you have to vote to get permission to do things. I should really ask about that.'_

Hopefully it would go away, having to go around bribing people sounded like a real pain in the ass, and from what I recall that was 90% of netherworld politics, another 9% was persuade by force, and the remainder was meeting the perquisites for the votes. I don't recall suddenly knowing what to bribe people with, so once again, I hope it goes away.

Refocusing on the current oddity at hand, I tried messing with the menu to my success much to my surprise. The first thing i noticed was i could touch it physically, which made moving it around easy. I could move it pretty much anywhere and it would just lazily float there, like a paper thin touch screen.

Messing around eventually caused me to notice my environment, which granted hadn't change from the desert and might of explained why I didn't really notice.

Only two things had altered. One I was floating near what appeared to be my body body, and two, everything seemed sort of dulled to various matted greys.

I could see Mya looking over her gear and glancing at me periodically. Most likely making sure I haven't grown horns, or spontaneously combust ,or something.

_'Both of which, are completely normal for some demons, but thus far, not for me.'_

While interesting it didn't really help much, and I found I was tethered lightly to my body. I just sort of drifted back to its area after going only about a few yards away, and the further I went, the quicker I was snapped back. If that wasn't lame enough I couldn't phase through anything either, heck I couldn't even kick over my little stick castle. On the bright side though I tried poking my finger on a sharp branch. Then I tried slamming my hand on it with increasing force. And nothing happened. So at least im not vulnerable like this.

It might seem weird that I test the what else can I do aspect before I check my baseline abilities. But honestly im looking for any unfair advantage I can get. If I could have gone far away from my body and pass through walls, I'd essentially be an instant first class scout and spy. A leap in ability, instead of an incremental one that I would expect from this universe who's games where a grind fest.

Letting out a (mental) sigh, I looked back at the menu. Wish was fairly straight forward, but I had to test it._ 'I wish the stick castle I made earlier was colored blue'_

I thought loudly, while pushing at my Mana. I still felt it and it didn't budge a bit to my relief.

_'Well at least I won't have any more accidental screw ups, that only leaves the intentional ones.' _I thought dryly. If nothing else I can just use Wish for everything and not have to worry about screwing anything up.

Well seems like nothing is going to explode, so lets go poke around.

Might as well start at the top and work my way down.

I clicked on infusion, and I suddenly felt Mana channel into my palms as a little pop-up window of text appeared to the side of the original window, it read;

'Infuse Mana into an object to create a unit. Infuse Mana into a unit to upgrade that unit. Upgrading units allows for new related unit types to be made. Channeling raw Mana without determining any unit types will spawn a demon based upon the area...'

_'That...was insanely helpful, Okay, so take Mana. Push into thing, pick a type of unit and you make person of that type. If you opt not to pick a unit type you get a monster from the area, I think Mya mentioned something like that like when Mana comes into an area a random soul just pops into it..I wonder how I pick a unit type?'_

I continued reading.

'It is possible to Infuse Mana into the ground to create objects and structures however the most generalized rule set for each object/ structure called its "Form" is likewise needed'

_''Huh that's weird, maybe forms are like instinctive blueprints or something.' _

I was mostly guessing, but thus far everything I had made had been more or less me wishing for something and then nudging it with some details.

_'Except my body, but then again all I was thinking of was trying to get a body at the time. So maybe I did it without realizing?'_

I couldn't remember, and I still had another two options to look into to I put It aside.

I clicked the cancel button causing my Mana to flow back to its resting position. I didn't wanna make any more units without talking to Mya.

She would do the 'Pinch her nose, because I did something annoying' thing.

I hate it when the does that thing.

Anyways I pressed cancel, which closed the description of Infusion, and moved one down to Channel.

Mana flowed into my hands, as another pop-up description presented itself.

I read like like a cheat-sheet five minutes before final test I hadn't studied for.

'It is possible to Channel Mana one of two ways. First select an owned object by connecting through the natural link formed when infusion is selected. Once selected the object can have Mana channeled in two ways. Soul channeling forces Mana through the soul of the selected, This allows an overlord to imprint some of the knowledge of that soul into themselves. The end result is to produce a Form based upon the type of soul channeled. This normally destroys the units body due to having too much Mana however Mana Savants, such as Overlord Enki never destroy a unit in this manner..'

_'What the fuck is a Mana Savant?' _was the first thing that came to mind. Actually it was obvious that 'I' was what the fuck a Mana savant was. I know this because it told me.

The question was referring to the fact I had no fucking clue of what all that was supposed implied. I guess the weird channeling thing, but that's not much to work with. I'd guess that it is supposed to mean instead of using Mana normally, I get the weird infusion and Channel methods.

I couldn't really decide what to make of it so I just chalked it up to more evidence I'm a wizard.

Having decided to put aside alternate implications of my demon type, in favor a pointy hat, I continued.

'..In addition to channeling a units soul, it is also possible to channel Mana into certain aspects of 'owned ' targets. These aspects are expanded upon due to the influx of power and become enhanced or altered based upon the ability selected. When a target is successfully upgraded in this manner the previous ability is added as a Law to your 'Book of Laws'. The guidelines for how Laws interact are listed on the front cover of the book. The only way to acquire Laws and additional Form's without Channeling is through a Wish, however Wishing will likely cost significantly more to unlock it if it would be otherwise avalible.

_'Hmm, okay so thus far, Infusion is my "make stuff" button, and lets me make units and objects. The former well, I'm kinda fuzzy on how to pick my unit type, but ill cross, and somehow accidentally break, that bridge when I come to it. But that latter requires me to unlock a 'Form', which from what I understand is a blueprint to make an object. Rule Change lets Channel is how I get Forms and Laws at least cheaply, and can let me upgrade abilities or something like that. Apparently Rule Change lets use whatever Laws I get, and do stuff with them.' _May I wish I had a piece o paper to take notes.

Well on the bright side ill have these pop up. At least I think I do.

I canceled an clicked infusion once again and fortunately, yes the pop up did return along with the slight Mana flow, which I'm guessing is how I choose an object to infuse. For completions sake I tried to move around the pop-up, which did indeed move just as easily as the menu itself, so it would be constantly in my way when I'm trying to do things.

Wanting to follow up immediately on the closest train of thought I jumped Inspect and went straight to Rule Change. To my surprise an Actual book popped in front of me floating lazily. Another pop-up sprang to life.

'Laws can be applied to owned objects to change the very nature of that object. To manipulate a Law tear it out of the Book of Laws and place it into its slot displayed via the pop-up menu that appears when creating selecting a person or object. The book of Laws always opens to the appropriate page as it is a mental construct. Unwanted laws must be torn out and mentally commanded to be destroyed.'

The cover of the book had its own little introduction.

Limitations to applying Laws:

1) Laws can only be applied if an object is 'owned' by the same Overlord.

2) Only two additional Laws may be applied to any object.

3) Rules added at Infusion cost nothing.

4) Base Abilities cannot be altered at Infusion.

5) Base Abilities cannot be exchanged except by higher or lower tier for the selected unit.

6)Laws cannot be destroyed while present in a unit, only exchanged.

7)Exchanging a Law Places one Law in the Book, and the other upon the target.

_'Okay that was extremely straight forward, Take abilities, shove into things to give them that ability.. Also I officially have a spellbook' _Not entirely accurate latter part, but highly entertaining none the less.

It sounded like the Evilities in later games, except I apparently wasn't limited to what I could put where.

At some point I need to make a tank or something with the 'Really Goddamn Hard' ability, then put it into myself, if I can, then talk Mya into a spar. Man that would be hilarious.

Okay, so no obviously broken things power wise, but at least there is some potential. I'll have to work it out with Mya sense she is really on the ball.

_'Speaking of Mya'_, I grinned at the grayed out Mya nearby._ 'I'd like to see why she was able to win so easily' _I thought as I clicked cancel, and Inspect.

Mana channeled into my hands and a pop-up appeared stating "Select what is is you would like to inspect." Succulent if nothing else.

I walked/hovered over to Mya and tapped her. With the orb in my left palm, Suddenly a window popped up next to her which I quickly began to read.

To my annoyance she was labeled at "Tier 1" instead of having a , which most likely put her on right on par with me. I gave a quick read of her abilities,

Then I burst out laughing.

Her basic ability, was called "Gun Bunny". Just imagining Mya running up a hill rifle in hand wearing a sexy light-blue bunny costume, was hilarious.

It was also appealing for some other reasons I won't go into detail over.. She is very cute if you recall my mentioning.

I think she would prefer to be shot than suffer the embarrassment of being forced to wear a bunny costume which makes the idea even funnier. Actually I think she would shoot me first, just for thinking about it.

The ability itself was actually pretty good. It boost to her evasion when at lower terrain or in a defensive position.

To my surprise she had a second ability called Natural Leader, which more or less said she could perform the leadership roles of an Overlord, and gives a moral boost to those serving under her.

Her weapon proficiencies where a bit what I expected. Daggers and Gatling Guns, where listed as B rank.

Rifles, and to my horror Flamethrowers, had an A rank.

_'Note to self: Never make suggestions to Mya regarding Ability-Wardrobe synchronization.'_

No other weapons where listed which I think meant she had no experience with them at all.

I felt her fist deserved at least a C given the number of times I've been impacted with them.

Mya's stats themselves didn't actually show me numbers, just bars floating around various positions of the screen screen , with each bar appearing to be measuring each stat compared to the others nearby. I suppose relative measurements made more sense in a real world scenario than numerical ones.

Each skill had a ranking which I guessed was her natural aptitude towards that stat.

One interesting facet was that she had both Hit and Tec stats, so I guess they combined for some things, both pretty high so I guess those relate to her skill list.

Her Aim was a high A rank, followed by Tec and HP both rated 'B'. She also had a B in movement. And C's almost everywhere else.

Her defense had a D. Which means when I punched her and it didn't hurt, meant I was that much weaker..

Having seen her defense, I hesitantly closed her pop-up, and selected myself.

I read.

I slumped.

"...god..damn-it..." I muttered quietly into the greyed out air.

[Edit: Fixed a error which stated Mya was level 1, Numerical representation of abstracts is something I'm trying to avoid as reading about number crunching is not fun]


	11. Chapter 11

"So essentially, you're an idiot savant?" Mya asked with all the (fake) innocence in the world.

I was not a happy camper and I glared at her balefully. _'I really could hate this fucking Bitch.' _

I was listed as a "Tier 0" whatever that means. It didn't really matter to me at the moment. What did matter was my 'stats' where simply put, awful. I had no weapon proficiencies, which granted, I have never even held a real weapon, but it's no a good sign when I check my proficiencies and it says 'none' in the descriptor.

My blue bars representing my stats where pitiful. They where tiny slivers next to their appropriate slots. The worst part of all by far was my aptitudes.

Most units in Disgaea and Makai Kingdom, along with any other games in the same universe, had units with certain aptitudes towards certain stats.

Near as I could tell, a 90 to 100% aptitude would be around a C, down to 80% would be a D, and falling, drop to 70% would be a E, which is the lowest you could see in the games.

For completions sake, an as high as 110% would get you a B, and 120% would be A rank. Anything higher than that would be some form of S I suppose, if they use S in the ranking, or it could just remain A. These numbers are just guesses at this point, but It really didn't matter at the moment, because I had other problems.

My stats where Terrible. Capital T.

Almost all of my stats where labeled 'F' . They where below 70%. You literally could not go that low in any of the games that I recall. That was a "Hey lets go arm all our squishy casters with swords and let them go beat up Overlord Enki" low.

The low Intelligence bothered me the worst I think. I'd always considered myself one step above the average in life, so the F label pissed me off something awful. .

My so called "Saving Grace" was that my HP was a 'B', and surprisingly my SP was an 'A'

All of them where very clearly on the lower end of their respective scales, though I think my Tech and my Hit where slightly higher than the rest of my crap stats, I could be imagining it easily enough though.

I had to console myself that the bars where likely mental constructs, and the Aptitude actually refereed to how much benefit I get from items. At least that's how I think it all works. I'm going with that theory because it gives me hope at least.

_'Seriously what the hell, wasn't an overlord supposed to have better stats than his minions at the very least?' _I won't be mentioning this to anyone in the foreseeable future though. They might agree and make me their vassal or something and I currently couldn't do a damn thing about it.

It turns out Mana Savant was apparently my base ability, not my demon classification, which was apparently just "Overlord". The description wasn't much use as it said was "This character has abilities as a conduit and potential Master of all things Mana related. Cannot be changed, or altered by any means." I sorta get that last bit, I guess. If it's my base ability that lets me alter stuff, it makes sense It would be the one thing I cannot ever change. It would be like trying to amputate your right arm using only your right arm. Its a logistical problem.

Desperate to find anything good at all to waylay my current crapness.I discovered I hadn't noticed was the ability to scroll down revealing known skills and elemental resistances.

I had no skills as of yet, and I had a -25% elemental resistance across the board. Even spell-casters are going to find me squishy. Words cannot describe how sad that is.

I numbly backtracked to check on Mya. Scrolling down, seeing what I expected. she had a couple of Dagger skills and a decent number Rifle and Flamethrower skills.

The little Pyro also had 85% fire resistance, which was pretty damn high., neutral wind, and a -50% ice. Which pretty much decide for me that we needed an ice caster on our team. And someone for wind as well I suppose. Might as well cover our bases. Honestly I just wanted someone I could order to mess with her by putting ice down her shirt given she was weak against it. Don't know if that would carry over but it would be funny to see.

It took me a while to inform Mya everything I discovered on my abilities. She actually seemed initially impressed, she also greatly approved on how my first inclination was to try and cheat my way to power. Apparently it isa , and I quote, "time honored demonic tradition."

The infusion seemed pretty standard to her, but my ability to upgrade without having to reincarnate surprised her as she had never heard of that before.

She was greatly surprised indeed when I revealed I didn't seem to have a way to reincarnate units at base, but I pointed out that between all my abilities, reincarnation seemed a bit redundant anyways. She eventually conceded the point. I could improve units with Infusion, and Ability Channeling, I could give new abilities directly with Rule Change, essentially replacing the need for Reincarnation, and surpassing it, at least in the short run, because I could do all this without any loss of power on the units end. There was some benefits regarding reincarnation and levels from the series, but I had no idea what actually applied and what didn't.

She was very impressed with how quickly my inspect ability allwed me to summarize what my troupes could do, apparently that was a good quality in an Overlord.

Unfortunately she made the mental leap that said I must have inspected my own abilities as well.

I should have lied and said I couldn't read myself. But I fucking suck at straight faced lying. I'll omit the shit out of some..Less favorable details, but I can't straight faced lie to save my life. And based upon past experience she would probably see right through anyone less than amazing at it anyways.

Which brings me to now.

"So essentially, you're an idiot savant?" The blue-Haired girl asked with mock innocence and curiosity. No one is that innocent and curious and not mocking, it isn't possible outside of very small children, and a kid she ain't.

"Shut up Pyro-girl" I retorted.

_'Funny how the blue haird chick likes fire and is weak against ice' _

I though however that was followed by;

_'Blue flames burn hotter though',_ whispered from a treacherous portion in the back of my mind.

"I'll have you know fire can be a highly effective tool in all sorts of situations." she said bit back indignantly. Note how she in no way denies it.

She relented a bit, I wasn't really trying to hide my feelings on the matter. She might be a bitch from time to time, but she has never been a cruel bitch. Well to me, that whole fire thing likely has implications I don't really want to spend too much time on.. anyways.

"Look, I was just kidding, mostly." she said almost apologetic.

_'You had to add "mostly" didn't you?'_ I noted while looking at her incredulously.

"At any rate" she continued "So you might not be that great in a fight. My last overlord never fought a single time that I can remember, and it worked out well enough."

_'Wern't you killed, protecting his dumb ass?'_

"You don't really need to be on the front line anyways, We can work it out to where you don't have to put yourself in unnecessary danger so it won't matter what kind of combat ability you have." she said trying to make me feel better. With mixed results.

_'Its shit like this that makes her hard for me to deal with. First she acts like a Bitch. Pisses me off, then she goes all heart of gold on me.' _I thought irritated.

"Look I appreciate what your saying. But I don't like the idea of sending people off to die without being willing to take on some of that risk myself." She flinches the tiniest bit when I mention dieing. Not surprising given what I know of her recent experience "I don't wanna be some Ivory Tower Overlord who rules without ever doing things himself." I stated concisely

"For one thing it makes me the asshole who isn't willing to risk his self, for his own goals. For another, I don't think I ever would, but it always seems to me like people who detach themselves too much from what they do always end up doing some of the worst shit."

"Lastly from a more practical point of view. I don't know what kind of effect my own strength is going to have on what I can do, if I don't get stronger ill never unlock any new abilities. Also correct me if I'm wrong but the most efficient way to get Mana is through defeating demons in combat?" She simply nodded at the last one but had became really quite, and left a pregnant pause before replying.

"It hurts you know." she said quietly.

_'Huh?'_

"Dying hurts." I was going to say something snarky, but something in her look changed my mind and she continued looking kind of lost.

"I...It doesn't just hurt when you get killed though that usually does, it hurts afterward as well. Until your overlord brings you back. That's why demons who served under an overlord are so quick to want to be one or to off their current one. I think its because as a soul you don't have anyplace to keep your memories, so having to hold onto them without a body.. Prinnies don't have that problem, but they can remember everything, but from a unique perspective." She was rambling, but I didn't feel like stopping her.

"I asked one once when I had gotten a bit drunk and he told me that Prinnies remember everything about their lives on earth as well as all their lives as demons. He said some other stuff too, it was really weird because it was all deep and profound about wanting to go back and live another life. It's really weird seeing something as normally fun and silly as a Prinny talking like that."

The games always give the impression that the Netherworld was kind of a silly place, but thinking about all the things Mya had done and said, I realized their was some pretty messed up parts to it.

A lot darker than they they would ever include in Teen rated video-game. Even if they had an accurate picture of what the Netherworld was really like. Mya's had apparently died at least once before, and I could see she didn't enjoy the memory at all.

_'Man if it hurts to wait to be resurrected, I wonder if it's worse to not be resurrected or to be set back into the sea of bodiless souls' _It would be another thing I would try to avoid needing to ask about, if at all possible.

The Netherworld really was a piece of work. Make the slightly evil souls suffer until they can revive as a Prinny. Let them work off the rest as Prinnies until they work and/or pay off their debts and are allowed to be reborn. Then reinforce the fact that Celestia exist to make the people in each respective afterlife to try and live down, or up, to the expectations of each place.

'Is it any wonder that demons loose their shit and go all evil? _Which I guess in a messed up way makes both places run efficiently if nothing else' _Having evil assholes running the place designed to punish you is pretty damn likely to speed you right along. The opposite works for Celestia as well.

I think this is the first time I actually felt like I was really here, like this was a real place I was in.

_'How bad is my outlook that their has to be some messed up parts for me to feel like its real? Moving on I nead to Deal with Mya now. Worry about the rest later' _

"Oi, I'm your Overlord, and there is no way I'm going to let you, or any of my other minions, slack off just because they went and got themselves killed." I said at my most pompous. She snorted. I am not an intimidating task master. Actually I would consider myself having the heart of a jester, with the persona of a sleepy lion. Or vice versus, whatever works really.

Whatever the case it worked this time at least as it broke her out of her mood as she cracked a grin.

"Look, for whatever reason I woke up an Overlord. I won't say I'm never going to wanna slack off but I sure as hell am not going to just sit on my ass all day and let other people do my job. So lets figure out what our next step is. I'm glad you told me about it not being fun waiting to get resurrected, now I know I need to prioritize finding healer who can do that, or seeing if I can do it myself with Infusion with a Prinny seeing that it for whatever reason it doesn't bother them."

_'Devils in the details, this way no has to really get hurt and we can investigate something I might be able to do that might make up for the craptasticness up front.'_

"Anyways," I continued, "Now that we've gone over my abilities-"

"Or lack there of" Mya cut in, a bit more like her usual self.

"..Or lack thereof," I agreed letting it slide, just rolling my eyes, "We should talk about what our next move should be..."


	12. Chapter 12

Mya sat back down after our little conversation as I joined her and we got down to business.

"Okay so I think I got an idea of what you can do. First things first. We have four primarily objectives at this point in time. One we need a base, for reasons I already discussed.. Two is weapons Same thing. Three is money. And the last thing we need is to expand your territory as an overlord. That will give us more options for places to live, and potential resources."

"After looking about a bit, I don't think this netherworld is very old so there aren't likely a lot natural demons, Probably just a few towns or cities where demons have gathered so that works out well for us for now."

"How can you tell it's not very old?" I asked.

I already knew new Netherworlds could be made thanks to the games, but being able to tell at a glance was a new one to me.

I think Mya may secretly want to be a teacher, given how easily she enters 'lecture mode' .

"You can normally guess the age of a given area of a Netherworld, by how exotic it looks as well as how many ruins you see while traveling. If this Netherworld was old we'd see ruins of past overlords even in a desert like this one,"

_'So it does qualify for a desert. Neat!'_

"The other sign is that this desert looks pretty mundane. No rocky outcrops in the shape of teeth, No stone obelisk with writing on them In unknown languages, anything crazy like that."

"It's just a normal desert. Mana tends warp the environment in older portions of the Netherworld as it usually isn't concentrated enough to actually create a demons body, so instead it causes terrain to slowly warp into weird things based upon whatever half-thoughts the nearby souls might have."

"I was wondering about that, actually how aware are the wondering souls?"

I didn't like the idea of countless invisible people watching me at all times.

"Not very. No soul remembers any details while they are between bodies, at least nothing useful. They just retain a sense of what went on and emotions. Before I was spawned by my previous overlord I spent somewhere in the range of seven hundred years trying to get a body. All I remember is how incredibly frustrating it was. I was ecstatic to serve my first overlord even, if I didn't like him personally. At least I could physically do things. The only thing I remember about the time I died is how much it hurt and how it seemed to drag on.."

I interjected before she could get lost in that train of thought again "So we can put building a base on the back-burner?"

It worked as she continued. "Yea, It's not as important as I had thought. Most natural demons get drawn to each other and form groups and towns. Sometimes even cities. All souls normally retains the desire for social contact, regardless of type of demon they are. Even if they don't really care for the company they keep." That could have been a jab at me, but I didn't think it was.

_'So even demons get lonely I guess. Sounds about right. The only instances I recall from the games where a demon didn't, involved some "bad ending" scenarios.'_

"Getting back on track, between the lack of Mana in the area, and how young the netherworld is, I think it's safe to say we aren't likely going to run into anyone anytime soon. At least not in the middle nowhere. Both Shelter and weapons require you to have one of those Form things anyways, so that's going to be a dead end until you unlock what we need.. We can open up a mine to dig for Hell after we have a place to put the money, and we need to earn enough to pay the Prinnies to cover their wadges until the mine gets up and running . Lastly.."

"Hold up, you can literally just dig for money? Why doesn't everyone just do that if its so readily available"

She huffed a bit at being interrupted, but answered anyways "Because normally it's not worth it." She said as she reached in her back pocket and pulled out a silver/platinum coin with a HL on it and tossed it to me.

"I found that while I was waiting for you to recover earlier. There isn't normally lot near the surface because its almost always been shifted through. No one but a Prinny would dig for that kind of return. And that's only because a Prinny in the Netherworld only gets payed a single Hell a month on average."

_'Wow that's fucking terrible, and I don't even have any real comparison yet.'_

"The only people who can really get that kind of thing organized enough to make it worthwhile are Overlords who can use Prinnies, and highly charismatic or powerful demons. They tend to be expensive to start up and they don't give much return until they get really deep."

Anyways, that means the last goal is to expand your territory, which you should really make some specialized units for. A Scout would be by far the best option if you can. Though I don't know what kind of units you can summon yet. I suppose you don't know what I'm talking about when I say a Scout?" She asked not really expecting me too. _'I'm not that bad am I?'_

"That depends, by Scout do you mean a high movement, light firearms specialist, that has abilities regarding GeoChanging and summoning Turrets? Normally most useful in the Item-world? " She blinked. Twice.

They where actually decent characters, but GeoChange had debatable use because it was random, I always liked the turret though. If you summoned them correctly you could tear up your foes and aggro them at the same time.

"I have no clue what you mean by the 'item world' or Geo-change.."

_'YES!' _I thought.

I always hated the item world. The idea of having to go through a hundred maps of enemies to upgrade an item always felt extremely tedious and padded. Especially considering you could still lose out on some of the power of the items even if you did persevere, due to map positioning or whatever.

"..But that's actually a pretty good description. What other units do you know about?"

I grinned. And I answered her.

I'd put in a good amount of time in a number of the Disgaea games normally enough to unlock most of the base classes at the bear minimum for the ones I played. I also put a LOT of time into Makai Kingdom. I didn't get all the endgame items, but I've broken a million damage before in it and I killed the Tyrant Baal in his original form.

By the time I finished she was dumbstruck. I might not have memorized everything, but I had a damn good knowledge base.

"Okay, what the hell? I'd never even heard of like eighty percent of all that." she said, her face dancing between impressed and incredulous.

"I told you I had some experience with some video-games that all took place in the same Meta-universe that the Netherworlds appear to coincide with."

She gave me a strange look, then scratched the back of her neck remarking, "Well I guess ill just put it up, as a point in favor of me buying that ridiculous story then."

"I thought you believed me?"

_'I'm telling the truth damn it! At least I think I am...'_

"I said I acknowledged it was just possible, and that I'd go along with it." she corrected. Which made me feel like grumbling a bit.

"Anyways its good you seem to have such a varied knowledge base. Unknown enemies can really screw up your forces if you can't adapt to them."

"Some of the things you listed where a bit off, but I'll assume its off because you only know it in terms of your 'games'." She air-quoted

"Two things I noticed that was off was your description of Skulls and Magicians. You have the two backwards. From what I've seen witches seem to be the more powerful, and skulls tend to be able to cast a lot more. Making the former the offensive sweeper, and the latter act as magic support in groups."

"The other big difference I noticed was your description of what Geomages and Scouts sounded way off.

" I have no idea what they did in your 'games' ." She didn't actually air-quote this time, but I could hear her doubt. In her defense I had to admit it was a rather hard sell.

"But, Scouts have the ability to claim territory on behalf of Overlords, so you don't have to go in person. They can also create and reinforce defensive positions very quickly which would really help us out while we don't have a base. I've never heard of a scout turret shooting allied units as they are more or less extensions of themselves, although iv also never heard of them firing rapidly like that. From what I saw in my own scouts their guns tended to take a lot out of them to keep up and running, Also the Turrets tended to decay and collapse back into spiritual energy rapidly the moment they stopped feeding them power."

"Geomancers are considered by far the worst combat magicians, and I've never heard of them doing anything like heal or use combat magic, but everyone employs them for their ability to fix up defensive structures. Unfortunately I don't know the details as it was never my job to worry about how our defenses where built. Only that they where correctly manned."

_'That's weird, then again ideas are often shifted in games for design decisions. Given someone made up the "Item World", they had to tailor units to specialize in it I guess, and neither of them sounded hyper useful in a small man squad like the games normally ran with.'_

"Well, you know your units well enough, and given the fact you supposedly played a game that seemed to focus on doing this kind of thing, I think you should make whatever you think we need. The only thing you should keep in mind is we could really use a Geomancer, and more importantly right now, a Scout. Also I think you should make sure to soul channel everything you can to see if you can't get any useful Forms. If you could make us weapons that would be incredibly useful."

I had already planned on doing that last bit, but I still nodded in agreement. I had kind of thought Mya would dictate what I should make a bit more. Then again as Overlord, I'm supposed to make those kind of decisions, and thus far she seemed to like to adhere to the default command structure when she could.

_'She really is an Cute-Army-Girl at heart.'_ I smiled at the thought.

**Whack**

Something smacked me lightly in the side of my head.

"What the hell?" I looked and saw her open hand the guilty party of the strike.

"Something about the way you where smiling told me I needed to hit you" she supplied casually. She didn't hit me very hard, I think she had guessed that being hit pissed me off as she had pulled back a lot on the aggression, ever since she pressed me to use my SP.(Spiritual Power)

_'That's freaky..She really is a Uncute-psycho-knife-chick at heart._' I amended silently before letting it go and settling down to see what I could do to improve our situation.

[AN: Minor edits where made for flow, and reasoning behind actions, This so far has been my least favorite chapter, i felt like they needed to sit down and talk a bit more, but it felt like i was doing nothing but repeating myself for whole time i wrote it. Still it does the job i guess.]


	13. Chapter 13

As a grey film overlaid the world, I emerged from my physical body, and looked around.

Nothing had changed from when I initially investigated. Same menu and everything.

The first thing I wanted to do try was Channeling Mana, through Mya and myself to see what happened. It might give me an idea how much Mana it cost.

I pressed the Channel button, and pressed my palm against myself as the Mana charged up in my hands. Immediately my status menu popped up, however it only showed a picture of myself and my ability "Mana Savant"

_'I guess I need to select what I'm channeling' _Seriously, how long would it of taken me to figure all this out if it wasn't in game format? I'd probably be eaten by dragon or something long before I ever figured it out..

Well Mana savant said it couldn't be altered no matter what I did, so I clicked my portrait.

Have you ever stood over a really deep hole? Just kinda looked into the void and you had to seriously wonder just how much it would take to fill it? That was the feeling I suddenly had.

_'Holy shit' _more or less summed it up. I didn't know how much Mana I needed, but I knew how much I felt I had, and how much it would take to actually Soul Channel myself. There is a very, very, big difference between the two. There is probably some deep meaning about learning about ones own soul in all this, but honestly I was a bit overcome by how vast the void was to actually do so that I couldn't really appreciate it.

_'Well fuck, if it takes that much to channel every time, it's going to be a long ass time before I can do so.' _It would be a good idea to check that out. I'll try channeling Mya, and see if it normally takes that much. If it does ill have to bring it up with her after I draft a few more demons to the cause. It's just not going to be a viable option if it does.

I moved over near Mya who was lying down at the moment.

{_I wonder what she is thinking about?"_ I mean I have all kinds of shit to be trying to work out on my down time.

_'Then again she probably spends most of her time worried about me screwing up' _I thought, a bit sad as that is there is a good chance its true. I don't really know her that well come to think of it, and she's more or less stuck with me.

_'Well, demons live for hundreds of years and shes stuck with me until she want's to leave, so no real rush I guess' _I couldn't honestly even humor the idea that I'd try to get rid of her on my own, even at the times she is pissing me off. Being stuck without a body sounds like it really sucks, even worse than what I had to go through. Not to mention how I've seen how she's helped me so much, and how I've nice of a persons she can be, at least when she isn't aggravating me.

I put my still charged hand on Mya which caused her own window to show up, same deal. Just a large picture on the left, and a list of her Abilities on the right. Although it would be fun to see what Gun Bunny upgraded too, I selected the portrait. To my relief the 'emptiness' I felt was significantly smaller, and I knew I had more than enough Mana to fill the void this time, with plenty to spare. I did so.

Mya had a rather odd reaction during the few seconds it took to channel. Here eyes glazed and her body tensed as if she was expecting to be struck. However I finished my channeling quickly and the Mana I spent 'jumped' for lack of a better word, back to me and settled into my brain.

My mind raced as new concepts flew about in a disorderly mess. I now understood why she felt not having normal demon instincts was a massive handicap to say the least if this is her level of understanding for all this stuff. I know with absolute certainty she gave me the 'Rifle' Form. I know more about Makai-Rifles than any object I ever knew about when I was alive. I had perfect knowledge on how to calibrate a spirit recursion chamber, which was where you 'loaded' your spiritual power into it. I knew exactly how the recoil dampener was supposed to be setup so if you put in a lot more spirit than a normal shot, like if your using a special move with SP, you wouldn't blow off your arm with the recoil.

My thoughts where interrupted however

**WHAM**

I flew back and unfortunately cracked my head onto a rock sending a jolt of pain into my brain.

"Oww," I groaned before the reality of the situation hit me.

"What the actual fuck Mya?! What the hell did you do that for!" I yelled angrily.

Funfact: I almost never yell. My voice carries well and I'm a natural at projecting. When I do though it really gets peoples attention because its so out of character. Also its loud.

This apparently still held true because she halted mid stride, apparently she was going to hit me again, _'I'm dealing with this shit. Here. And. Now.'_

"You tell me, what the fuck where you doing to me?!" she hollered back, but not as effectively as I had, which made me childishly happy.

"I was channeling! You know, the thing we just discussed not ten minutes ago. You know the one where you specifically told me I should do that to everyone I could?"

She got an odd look on her face, and spoke out loud, but to herself. "I thought...Sorry" she added.

I might of let it go, but I felt a warm trickle down the back of my head, I think I had a cut on my forehead too from when she checked me., and I used my hand to check them.

_'Yep, I'm-a-bleedin'' _I noted. I was going to let her off once again, and just chalk it up to her being a Blue-Haired-Demon-Bitch, but blood has been drawn.

I'm not going to worry about fighting every demon in the netherworld, and Mya.

I'm not really what I'd call leadership material, but I'm very direct when dealing with problems, which can substitute in a pinch.

There was a problem going on here, and I needed to deal with it.

I walked right up to the girl, who looked very worried if I was going to attack her or not. I'm sure I looked angry, I could feel my face contorted into my angry face. I almost never wore that expression so the muscle group tension felt out of place.. I know for a fact it's pretty intimidating At some point my spiritual power had started putting out a fairly impressive malicious aura as well, at least I'm assuming it was.

I noted abstractly that if I still couldn't use my SP before, I could of now. Which might have been her goal earlier, though that's neither here nor there at the moment.

Standing in front of the girl who seemed very unsure of herself for the first time. I don't know why, she could easily kick my ass, but this would not be the time to point that out.

"Sit down Mya." I ordered as calmly as possible. We had a stand off for half a second before she backed down, and sat right on the spot. The blood dripping down the left side of my face likely didn't hurt on the intimidation factor.

The reason I asked it was three fold.

One I wanted her to do something that had her listening to me. In theory I was the quote-unquote superior officer, regardless of experience. If I started the conversation from that position, it would be easier to keep it, and would be a lot more productive.

Two it made it unlikely the situation would escalate into a fight, which I would loose. That would set a very bad precedent of she gets mad, its okay to hurt me. And I wouldn't be able to do anything to stop her except threaten her, which was something I didn't want to do to anyone. So it would be a no-win scenario in my book. I might never be a great demon, but I'd like to be an okay person.

She looked up at me looking very unnerved, which I guess stems from my apparent 180 in personalty.

I closed my eyes and took a few breaths and calmed myself as much as I could, causing the malicious aura to fade away, and as for the Third part, it set me up to sit down across from her. I didn't want to deal with this problem while standing as it would put her on the defensive, and given I needed her to talk, wouldn't be very productive. Letting me come down to her eye level would help somewhat.

"Mya" I started, which caused her to flinch slightly, I didn't like that at all but continued, focusing my anger calmly into words.

"I need to be clear about a few things. The first is I am not okay with other people hitting me. There might be some leeway for teaching, but I do not consider this acceptable behavior. I am not going to fight a war on two fronts with one side being all the demons of the Netherworld and the other being the people who are supposed to be my allies. Only a fool picks those kinds of fights, and only an idiot accepts allies that do so. I do not consider myself either."

"This fascination you have for hitting me needs to stop. At this point in time I am not physically capable of simply shrugging off your temper tantrums. The only reason that last blow didn't kill me was because as a Demon, even a weak one, I am still more resilient than I was when I was alive. So it needs to stop. It pisses me off, It is counter productive, It is dangerous. Do you understand."

Mya nodded, but I waited for her to say it.

She eventually mumbled out, "Yes, I understand.." She looked like she would rather I of hit her instead which while It didn't make me happy. Did a lot to vent any remaining harsh feelings.

I took a deep sigh before nodding and continuing. "Okay, I think you do. Now please tell me what set you off."

She hesitated for a while before answering. "Under my last overlord, He said he wanted to reincarnate me into a commander because I had an 'aptitude for running the base' I was excited because I thought I would finally get the instincts to help me do what I already was trying to do."

"Running his forces was a nightmare, everyone was always fighting about something or another, the only way I could get anything done was with bribes and threats._"_

_'That actually sounds par for the course to how you get demons to do stuff from what I remember from the games...'_

"So he dissolved my body in order to create me a new one, I was so excited..." she trailed off

"I'm guessing something went wrong?" I said to get her to continue.

"You could say that. He didn't realize how much it Mana it would take to reincarnate me while keeping most of my skills. Apparently he decided that it would be cheaper to simply make a new unit as a Commander. So I was more or less dead and well.."

"Being dead hurts" I added numbly. Man that was so messed up. The asshole probably didn't even care.

_'He better hope I don't find him' _I though murderously. Treating anyone like that would piss me off, much less someone I know.

"He did reincarnate me, but it was years later, and his Commander was off attacking someone with his main force and he needed someone to man the defenses while they where away. Turns out he had enough mana to reincarnate me for a long time, he just forgot about me."

_'Fuck, and how many other people did this shit happen to, with other Overlords?' _The idea of killing off other overlords just to save the souls they might be neglecting was starting to gain appeal. I knew they would just get turned into another wondering spirit anyways, so I wouldn't even have to feel bad for offing them.

"We where being overrun by a completely different Overlord he'd attacked recently. He didn't share your openion on fighting on multiple fronts" she said sardonically.

"I think I get it, so why did you attack me?" _'By now I think I had a vague notion based upon one of the descriptions of my abilities.'_

"When you where channeling, it felt like a stronger mix of what it felt like both when I had my body disbanded, and when I was reincarnated. I didn't know what was happening but I wanted it to stop.."

_'Yea that was more or less what I expected. The description of Mana Savant clued me in when it said normally the "Object" would be destroyed from channeling, but being a Savant I avoided that.'_

I rubbed my eyes a bit, trying to suppress the headache from forming. Mya was a tough girl, but I had accidentally jabbed her in a weak spot and she just reacted naturally..

"Okay, I get it. At some point we might want or need to upgrade your basic abilities, and it will likely feel exactly the same." That made her tense up. "However, I don't see that happening in the foreseeable future. I'm just giving you a heads up. Remember my own ability is Mana Savant, which more or less says right out that you don't have to worry about that. I'm sorry that it scarred you."

"I wasn't scarred." She stated indignantly.

I gave her a look that clearly said_ 'You are so full of shit' . _But I let the comment pass otherwise unremarked upon.

"Well now that that's out of the way" I said with a bit of nonchalance to break a bit of the tension. "Some good of this came at least." That perked her attention.

"Hmm, whats that." She asked leaning back on her hands and taking a bit more of a relaxed posture now that the proverbial storm seemed to of passed.

"I think I learned how to make Makai-Rifles" I said casually.

She smiled as wide as I ever seen. It seems tools of pain and death beat out even chocolate, for cheering up Cute-Military-Girl. Which is good because I don't know how to make chocolate. If I did we wouldn't accomplish nearly as much though, I have a bad sweet tooth.

"That's great news, when can you make us some?" eager aren't we?

"I'll guess I could give it a shot. Right now." That pun wasn't intentional..at first. Luckily she either didn't catch it, or didn't care. I don't know demon policy on the beating of punsters yet, so I might wanna hold off for now.

Besides giving Mya something to shoot people who attack me while I'm doing my ghost impression sounds like a winning idea to me. I drop into my, I don't really know what the actual name is for what I'm doing technically. I guess ill just call it my Magick whenever applicable, mostly because its still all magick as far as I'm concerned, and I don't wanna have to waste time thinking about it.

I pressed the infusion button the moment I saw it while putting my other hand on the ground at the same time. Mana flowed into the ground when a new screen showed up.

Select a 'Form'! The only one available was [Rifle], but I knew it was a Makai Rifle. No one uses the regular kind here that im aware of. Based upon what I know thanks to the form, it probably because its easier to shoot Bullets made out of Spiritual Power at each other, rather than finding or making ammo.

I pressed it and to my surprise, Instead of just starting to draw on my mana, another window popped up.

Would you like to apply any Rules? Huh, so I could add rules to items as they spawned. That was interesting. Though I didn't have any at the moment so I pressed no. I felt the Mana being drawn out of my pool. It was about as much as Channeling had taken. When all was said and done. I saw a very sleek looking greyed out gun underneath my physical forms hand. Mya had taken to leaning forward and watched with wonder.

_'Its about time I did something impressive'_I'd gotten a lot of ridicule from the girl from the moment we met. Its nice to impress for a change. My ego had needed a good cuddle by this point. I popped out of my Magick and closed my hand around the rifle. The thing was damn heavy, and felt more like a miniature cannon than a gun. I lightly tossed it two her with both hands, to my chagrin she caught it one handed. She looked like she just got the biggest piece of candy in the store. "This is amazing, Its a lot better than the gun I had used before. "

_'Man I wish I would have thought to check its stats. Actually I wish I could check things stats without having to enter my magick. That's something I might wish for in the future.' _

Mya decide to try it out. I had been near a gunshot before when I was alive, and to my surprise the Makai-Gun was a lot quieter, The bullet was also a good deal bigger.. I suppose its because its made of Spirit energy. Either way Mya had taken to practicing her shooting an a poor innocent boulder some fifty meters away. I had planed on waiting for her to stop fan girling before I made any new units as spawning someone next to the Crazy-Cute-Gun-Bunny (Interpret that however you'd like) and the apparently sleeping overlord would be a bit confusing. However realizing it would be a long time before her to do so naturally, I force myself to interrupt her fun.

"Hey Mya, I plan on making some backup now and I need you to be here to greet them, while I take care of business." She looked chagrined, but nodded and took up a defensive position on top of a rock. Her new gun sitting on her lap.

_'Fifty HL says she names it before the week is out,'_ I thought with amusement.

I hopped back into my Magick in record time. The first thing I did was check out the stats of the Gun I made. I was curious, sue me.

A menu screen popped up .

To my surprise it looked a lot like a character screen with only a few exceptions. Firstly it didn't have any stats. Instead it had a Damage Bar, along with a little colored dots above it.

And it had two aptitudes listed. 'C' Tech, 'C' Aim. I was going to remark on my confusion when my offhand accidentally brushed against Mya. And to my surprise a portion of the damage bar of the gun highlighted. It took me a minute to figure out what I had done.

Apparently I could compare two things, or see how they affected each other by touching both at the same time.

I think that every one of the Stat Bars I've seen have been comparisons of sorts. I think mine where relative to Mya based upon our during our fight which is why they are so low at least I I hope so._ 'Because then there's hope I don't completely suck, if my stats where based upon my actual ability AND my preconceptions.' _I'm still definitely weaker than she is though.

Though my aptitudes seem to be set in stone unfortunately.

Two I think the gun's Damage was showing its output of damage verses my unarmed damage. . I think it was trying to compare damage between my unarmed weaksause attack, and Mya's mini-cannon and had to resort to logarithmic progression.

It jumped around a good bit while I was comparing but I think that's because I'm trying to force reality to fit into an abstract representation., but gave a generalized idea on how much power the gun was putting out relative to my own. I think the colored dots represented the fact that it was at least one order of magnitude above me. Given how much damage it was dealing to the boulder I could believe it.

The aptitude was how much those stats improve the guns damage. Made sense to me now that I had the guns Form. Makai-Guns need a LOT of calibrations to really be effective, I suspect better version would only increase the return of a skilled soldier. I could be completely wrong of course, but based upon observations it seemed to fit.

So yea, bottom line, I need to get a weapon if I ever plan on getting into a fight.

A thought occurred to me, and I checked my own stat screen again. There it was and I hadn't even noticed. Gun Proficiency 'E'. Apparently getting a Form is enough to make you able to use a weapon. Granted 'E' was terrible but its better than an 'F' at any rate. It was something.

I also noticed a pattern as well. I only had two open slots, and Mya only had one open slot, The gun had two open slots. The gun didn't have a base ability so just had two open slots. Both of us had two ability/rule slots, plus our base abilities. Mya had picked up leadership at some point,_ 'And her idiotic previous overlord completely threw that talent away.' _I thought acidicly.

Well so far it seemed the two abilities in addition to any base abilities was fairly set in stone. Realizing how much time I had spent working all this out I stretched while floating in midair.

_'Well I guess I wasted enough time investigating better get a move on.'_

And so I clicked infusion and set myself up to get my newest minions.

[New recruits next chapter.]


	14. Chapter 14

I'm not one to get paranoid but I seriously am reconsidering the value in the whole Mana manipulation thing. It seems like every time I try it, something goes wrong. I summoned a crazy girl. She freaked out when I used it to make clothing. She freaked out when I channeled it, to learn how to make her a weapon.

Actually I think I should just try to avoid using it too near Mya she is way too high strung.

I should work on finding her a counseling or something,.

Although she might chill out a bit once we have some shelter, and can get some down time. I think she is on edge and hasn't really had a chance to settle down from the start, I mean from her perspective, her week thus far has got to be some kind of fun mix of shitty and crazy.

Unfortunately I haven't been doing a great job as her 'boss' with assuring her everything is going to be okay either. I don't really feel like I am really at fault on that one, can't exactly help someone else out when you don't know what the hell is going on yourself.

Now, however, was the first step to making things stop sucking, and that was to make some backup. I pressed Infusion and walked over to a nearby patch of plant life which I 'selected' it by placing my hand on it, causing a tiny trickle of mana to flow into it. The descriptor that followed was

'Select the general Archtype of unit to be formed. Then select the subtype from the list. New Archtypes can be accessed by expending mana to unlock. New subtypes require a certain amount of experience with previous units within that Archtype, as well as Mana to unlock. '

The explanation was likely for the second sub-menu that had appeared. This time There where large buttons . The top instructed: Select Unit Type, and below followed a list of options. Only one wasn't gray, and that was [Soldier], however it also listed [Rogue],[Sage],[Warrior], [Holy].

Seeing as it wasn't grayed out I clicked on the [Soldier] button.

A window appeared depicting four tiny models in little boxes. On the far left, was a man and a woman each wearing outfits similar to Mya's, labeled Infantry(M) and Infantry(F) respectively.

A thin black line connected their box to two other boxes, both grayed out. One was labeled Medic and the other to my glee, was listed as a Scout.

The medic gave me pause, I knew we would need a Healer on general principal, however I also recall in Makai Kingdom giving my Medic's using oversized Syringes as weapons, as well as tools to heal. I do not like the idea of getting stabbed by a two foot needle.

_'Yea, I'm gonna look into that "Holy" Archtype, and see if I can't get a normal healer instead.' _

I'm not sure what each Archtype had, but I had a vague notion. Holy likely had Medics and 'Angelic Host'. The Rogue Srchtype would have Thieves. The Sage was a no brainier, I'd wager my las (and first) HL, It was filled with casters. The warrior threw me off a bit because it was so generalized, are their any non warrior demons? At the moment, i'd guess on it being Male and female, fighters and brawlers. For now though my objective was clear. Unlock scout, Channel scout, see how much Mana I had left over.

I selected the grayed out Scout option.

I felt the Mana being pulled out. It was a fairly large sum too. Though my reserves felt fine, though not nearly as much remained as when I first landed.

The icon de-grayed itself, if that's even a word.

_'Well here goes nothing'_

I selected the Scout and felt the Mana flow into the weed. The whole area started to glow when, to my surprise, a tiny purple light settled into the glowing form which rapidly morphed into a human shape.

Moments later my hand was hovering just above the goggled forehead of our new scout. He blinked, then sat up.

Mya said something I couldn't understand because, for whatever reason, it sounded very distant.

Actually I hadn't really noticed, but whenever I enter my Magick the whole area gets really quite, like I'm hearing everything through a wall or something

It's not something that really grabbed my attention as much as if where completely silent, which probably explains why I didn't notice. Still it was annoying I couldn't even listen to a conversation when I use my abilities.

The Scout himself was actually pretty short, and to be honest he looked young, late teens most likely. I couldn't see him being old enough to get into a bar.

He wore a orange tank top shirt. A belt with a metal band in the middle, withe flaps coming down from the side, which held up a pair of plain green fatigue pants. He had a pair of high boots that looked like they where made for travel instead of combat. His hands where covered with a pair of fingerless gloves.

The most eye catching features where the large goggles on his rust-blond spiky-haired head, and the giant backpack that was shaped like a bat on his back, on its underside was tied a large rolled up map, if I had to guess.

I considered leaving my meditative state to do introductions, but Mya seemed to have things under control, and actually looked relieved that he was here.

_'It would be best to just take care of everything as quickly as possible, Instead of dropping in and out again and again'_

I checked our newest recruited stats. About what I expected. Good with guns, tolerable with rifles, shovels, and drills?

Apparently the weird weapons from the games are accounted for here as well.

I noted his highest proficiency was a B with guns, and C's with the rest.

He had mediocre but well rounded stats, Mostly C's,

His Hit was a B, and his Tech and Movement was A however. Mya had a B, so apparently he could really hoof it.

Not that they would be able to take advantage of it as my 'F' movement rating put me at a sedate mosey by comparison.

Letting out a sigh, I clicked the channel option, to see if he could give me any useful forms.

_'Click, select, rinse, repeat' _It was starting to feel kinda repetitive as I felt my Mana flow away and through our newest recruit.

A rush of information hit me.

I have never been one for camping. The idea that people willingly go out to sleep on the ground when we spent the last thousand years figuring out how to get as far away from doing so, has always mystified me. That being said there is a lot of things that go into making a real camp. Not the kind that you see at a park, but a real frontier camp. Where you put the campfire so the wind doesn't blow the smoke into the sleeping areas, How you set up defenses, How to set up your layout so people can easily find things, It's actually not that hard. Well, not anymore I guess.

A lot of it is sorta obvious,but not forgetting anything would be hard if you haven't done it before and had no idea what to do. Getting this Form was definitely a plus. Particularly the palisade, which is the fancy name for big ass wooden wall.

The moment the knowledge finished processing I wasted no time to see if anyone was advancing on me. I didn't 'think' Mya or our new scout would slug me, but it didn't hurt to check.

He seemed a bit disoriented but had apparently came too about the same time I had, and was asking Mya something which I still couldn't understand. She thumbed over to me which more or less let me guess what was going on. He didn't seem like he was going to attack me out of the blue like a crazy person, so I might as well just keep on going..

Because I the next unit I was planning on making would be female I looked around and found a flower. No particular reason other than I thought it would be be a better fit than a rock or one of the mostly dead looking trees in the area. The only one I could find was on a tiny cactus.

_'Eh, beggars being choosers and whatnot'_

I put my hand on the plant, to my happy surprise it seems I'm immune to the needles of the plant as they didn't stick me when I brushed my hand against them. If your asking why I poked the needles, what is the first thing you do if presented with something you know is sharp.

_'That could just be a me thing though..'_

I started the infusion procedure once again, this time however I tapped on the [Sage] option, another pull on my Mana, and it unlocked. The lowest tier in the Sage Archtype was the Skull and Mage. I didn't see any other options at the moment, however I think it was mentioned earlier that I need to make weaker units before getting the stronger ones. At any rate I knew what I wanted.

In a smooth series of motions I unlocked, and selected the Mage.

My master plan was very simple. Damage boost to abilities was awesome, and I wanted to see if I couldn't try and upgrade it off her and give it to myself. SP was the one thing I hand any amount of and I was going to use it.

If the Skull was the class that had it I would have made a Skull. I'm really glad I mentioned it to Mya because it would have been annoying getting the wrong class.

_'I could still be getting the wrong class, and Mya just had a experience bias.'_

Nothing I could do to fix that though, thus far she had good information and I couldn't really fault her if her personal experience wasn't accurate. To the best of my reasoning she had a better chance of being right about it than I did, despite having played a game version.

Selecting the Mage caused a secondary screen to pop up.

'Select Mage Expertise'

Below it showed three different Types, Fire, Ice, and Wind.

Sticking to my guns I picked Ice.

_'Take that Crazy-Knife-Girl'_ I though happily, and with only a tiny bit of spite.

Mya had skills with a Fire based weapon, and the Mage I picked would be able to cover Ice.

So it might give us some balance later on.

The fact that Mya was weak against Ice, and thus having someone specialized in it would great potential to her future discomfort in no way influenced my decision. Scouts Honor! What's that? Was I ever actually a scout? Well that's besides the point.

Our newest addition coalesced as a tiny purple mote settled into the shifting form, seemingly solidifying it into a blue-outfitted girl with blue hair that was a couple full steps darker than Mya's own electric-blue hue.

Her outfit was essentially a frilly one piece dress. I'm not an expert on dresses, and I have never had any desire to correct this fact, so I don't actually know the type. The entire ensemble looked like someone couldn't decide between a wizard robe, and a french maid costume, and said fuck it. Long and loose frilly arm lengths. The top portion was conservative but the skirt part reveled a respectable amount of leg, and cut off low to mid calf. More than a few bows where tied in, including a large on on her head.

The Mage herself was very cute though, so the end effect worked quite well. Her shoes where buckled high tops, that looked fairly rugged. And she wore some high socks or stockings to finish the outfit off.

I checked her stats while I heard the other two pull her into a conversation in the background.

"_Defiantly a caster then'_

S rank in Int.

A rank aptitude in SP

B in Speed and Hit,

D in Defense and Hp,

E in Attack

C in everything else

I noted she was more specialized than the others, they where more generalized, but I guess that's bound to happen sooner or later. A mixed bag of generalist and specialist makes a good bit of sense I suppose.

Her only proficiencies where in books and staves, both at A rank.

She only had the basic Ice spell listed in her abilities at the moment.

Not wasting any time I moved on to channel, and tested her to see what Form I might get.

It was an odd feeling this time, instead of the other forms which where fairly straightforward hers had a level of complexity I wasn't expecting. I got the feeling of large rows and rows of books, arranged neatly. However what threw me off was the content of those books, and a feeling associated for how to make them. I don't really have the words to really do it justice, but imagine someone tells you you need to get ready to catch a huge water balloon being thrown from the other side of a house, and you have to catch it in such a way that it will always land in a empty kiddy pool you have available. And it's critical that you not mess up and spill a single drop, and that the kiddy pool will drain or be filled under certain conditions, etc. Yea it wasn't an easy feeling to describe. One thing I for sure though is, weirdness in the 'rules' for the Form aside, I now knew how to generate a library.

By this point I felt a little dry on the Mana end of things and I didn't know what to make next, so I dropped out of my magick.

To the sound of the blue haired Mage crying quietly on Myas shoulder. Our scout looked like he really wanted to hit me, and Mya had a deadpan look that said a great deal more than you'd think.

_'Seriously?'_ I though forlornly.

Some people can't catch a break.

Unfortunately "some people," is me.


End file.
